


Excerpts From the Jumpchain: Wagtail

by necrolectric



Series: Excerpts from the Jumpchain [1]
Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Jumpchain, Sekirei (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Fanservice, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, F/M, Jumpchain - Freeform, Multi, Other, Polyamory, Self-Discovery, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-08-02 06:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16299782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/necrolectric/pseuds/necrolectric
Summary: This is the story of how a lost and lonely bird finds herself, and in the process meets a traveler from very far afield and his monster bride.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For those of who stumbled onto this and have no idea what a 'Jumpchain' is, or what this self-indulgent nonsense is, allow me to explain.  
> The Jumpchain is a combination writing prompt and CYOA game in which a Jumper is sent on a crazy adventure across the multiverse. On average, a jumper only stays in each universe for about ten years, but there are exceptions.  
> Over the course of a jumper's journey, they may acquire skills, powers, items, and companions of various sorts to accompany them, and improve their chances of surviving the more dangerous 'jumps.'  
> Usually, when someone sets out to write out the story of their jumper, they start with that jumper's very first jump and go on from there in a logical, sequential order, showing the natural progression of their jumper as a character over the course of their long adventure.
> 
> So I decided instead to skip forward quite a few jumps, and do it all from the POV of someone other than the Jumper, because I felt like being original like that.
> 
> I do have a Patreon under this same username, and any donations you want to make to keep me fed and able to write would be greatly appreciated.

The first indication Homura had that his ‘destined one’ was an unconventional one came to him almost 2 months before they actually met in person.  It happened while Takami had been performing a routine check-up on him (and he was fully and completely male at the moment, thankfully), and the doctor’s phone had suddenly started ringing up a storm.

 

The woman sighed, setting down the tablet she’d been using to record today’s measurements before digging out her phone.  “If I’ve told them once, I’ve told them a hundred times.  Unless it’s an emergency, don’t call me while I’m doing an examination,” she growled when she saw the contact name shown on the screen.  Flipping the phone open, she held it to her ear and answered it.  “Sahashi.”

 

“I’ll be down there in just a few minutes.”  With that, Takami hung up and turned back to her patient.  “Homura, do you mind if we finish this up tomorrow?  Something’s come up with one of the younger sekirei.”

 

Homura felt himself tense up a little even as he reached for his MBI issued shirt.  Takami didn’t seem as concerned as she would have been if there had been another break-in or Scrapping, but all the same he couldn’t keep himself from worrying.  “Is it something dangerous?”

 

Takami shook her head as she packed up her personal equipment and packed away the rest into their proper drawers in the examination room.  “It’s something we haven’t seen before, that’s about all they can tell right now.  You take care of yourself, alright?”  With that said, the doctor bustled out of the room, already power-walking in a way that marked her as a department head with places to be.

 

Homura took a moment to look at himself in the mirror mounted to the side of the door for use in eye examinations.  He was a slim, delicately built young man with androgynous asiatic features, brown eyes, white hair, and a stoic, cool presence.  Aside from his unusual hair color, he would have caught the eye if he were outside because of his height,  5’6” being somewhat tall by Japanese standards.  His clothes were plain and utilitarian, a slight step up from the hospital gown that had been the standard uniform for these examinations when he was younger, but still obviously meant as just a temporary uniform.  He idly rubbed at his chest, then at the nape of his neck where the sekirei mark would one day appear.  Or at least, he could only hope that it would appear there, because that would mean that he had been winged by his ashikabi.  His ‘destined one’, as he’d overheard some of the more romantic and gossipy sekirei discussing on the few occasions that they’d been allowed to meet by the MBI staff.

 

Before leaving the room to be escorted back to his room, Homura spared a moment to silently pray to whatever god might listen to an alien raised by a human megacorporation that whichever of his fellow sekirei had been the source of the call that led Takami away hadn’t lost their capacity to be winged by their eventual ashikabi. 

 

That they wouldn’t end up like him, broken on a fundamental level, and cursed to live and die alone, in a body that never felt quite right.

 

_***_

 

_That night, Homura dreamed of an ashen wasteland, lit up by the glow of distant volcanic fires obscured by clouds blackened by soot and shadow.  Where the ground wasn’t covered in ash there were boulders and mountains that almost seemed to stab the very sky as their jagged peaks and edges stretched upwards.  In each corner of Homura’s vision, he could see a dark mountain range looming out of the smoke, and in each there was a dip where serrated stone peaks gave way to equally sawlike battlements and towers surrounding an opened gateway.  One of the gothic gateways was being hauled closed, and Homura could just barely make out the blurry forms of people on the ramparts gesturing frantically to those within, hastening the closing of the gate.  The opposite gate was open as far as it could go, although the stream of darkly armored figures flowing out was threatening to knock the colossal gates off of whatever hinges they had, such was their ferocity as they charged out._

 

_Just before Homura, kneeling in the ankle-deep ash, was a human man clad in a rough cloak, a length of cloth pulled over his nose and mouth as a crude breathing mask.  His eyes were closed as he sat calmly, hands resting loosely on his knees as the hot wind ruffled his dark hair, stained a dark grey by the ash carried by the wind.  A sword, long and double-edged in the European fashion, was embedded into the ground just in front of the kneeling man.  Despite the thickness of the ash, the sword was noticeably clean, gleaming a bright silver._

 

_Homura had just enough time to notice that unlike the other nightmares he had occasionally had about fire and ash he could still breath easily, before the sound of guttural war cries reached his ears.  Looking, he saw that the army from the other fortress was fast approaching, a legion of dark humanoids, but Homura could see the approaching outriders clear enough to realize that these were no men or women of earth.  Where their skin wasn’t covered by crude iron plates or animal hides, it flashed in shades of blue, green, and even a few shades of wine red and pallid grey .  Gaping mouths opened wide to release screams and bellows of inarticulate rage, revealing fangs that flashed in jaws that opened just a little too far and mouths that stretched a little too close to each ear.  The beasts that the monstrous riders rode were as savage and terrible in appearance as their masters, great hairless beasts with grey skin that stretched tight over bulging muscles and bony plates that stretched back over stout heads that carried jaws heavy with fangs._

 

_At the head of the horde was a rider on a beast bigger and paler than all the others, a dark cloak flapping in the wind to reveal the tarnished armor beneath.  This rider, more than the others, actually looked human, making the harsh green glow spilling from his eyes all the more jarring.  Unlike the others, his jaw was visibly clenched shut as he scowled, his ghastly visage drawn into a rictus of hate as he brandished a longsword, also glowing a faint but actinic green._

 

_The rustle of cloth drew Homura’s attention back to the kneeling figure directly before him, as the man smoothly stood up, eyes lowered as he reached for the gleaming sword and easily took it into hand, casting his cloak back over his shoulders with his unoccupied hand to reveal a tattered, almost threadbare shirt and pants over a tall, wiry frame.  The lone man looked up now, facing the oncoming horde with a defiant glare as his eyes seemed to seethe with emerald fire.  Unlike the pale, ghostly shade of the monster’s leader, this was a deeper shade that made for a less disturbing sight, somehow._

 

_His worn boots sliding through the ash with the sound of shifting gravel and sand,  the lone man settled into a ready stance, sword held up and back while his free hand stretched forward with his fingers held up half-tensed, as though he were about to start typing or finger painting on the air.  The flash of something gold beneath one of his sleeves caught Homura’s eye, but by the man’s sleeve settled back into place before Homura could see anything more.  When Homura next looked up at the man’s face, the green fire in his eyes had died down to reveal a pair of dull green irises that were looking straight at him._

 

_“You’re not supposed to be here,” came a whisper on the wind.  “I was all alone on that day.”_

 

_The lone swordsman’s attention snapped back to his front as the monstrous riders came upon him, and the solitary man’s blade was a shard of lightning in his hands as he leapt up towards the first rider in the line._

 

Homura woke up, his heart drumming in his chest so loud and so fast he could hear each beat, and smoke rising from his sheets where they touched his bare skin.

 

It was some time before he could make himself calm down enough to return to a normal body temperature, and even longer before he could get back to sleep.

 

***

 

The next day, he saw Takami Sahashi again as she had promised.  Homura went through the motions of the examination passively, having learned them by rote some time ago.  There wasn’t much point to refusing to play along with the tests, especially since Takami was about as happy with the situation that the sekirei were in as he was and although her sense of professionalism kept her resentment from seeping out as long as she was doing medical work, getting in the way of that very same professionalism was a good way to give her a target to vent on.

Having his breath and blood tested could only do so much to distract Homura from thoughts of the previous nights dreams, however.  Thankfully, he quickly realized that there was a subject of conversation just waiting for someone to bring it up.

 

“So, what was it that happened yesterday?  Is it something you’re allowed to tell me?”  Homura asked as casually as is possible for a man who is in the middle of pulling his pants back up.

 

Doctor Sahashi grunted non committedly.  “I’ve asked the other adjusters and technicians not to spread the news, since we don’t really know how or even what is happening there.”  In the absence of a cigarette to fiddle with, she chewed on her lip absently as she finished adding a couple of notes to the tablet.  “You know number 21?”

 

Homura had to think about the question for a second.  “Not personally, but I think I’ve heard a couple rumors about her… isn’t she the one who changed her name to Medusa?”

 

“That’s her.  Number 21, originally known as Suisho, but she’s only ever answered to Medusa ever since her adjuster decided to include a book on Greek mythology in her reading materials.”  Takami waved a hand in dismissal.  “I suppose the name fits, given what her ability is, even if it is a bit morbid.”

 

Homura frowned as he recalled what he remembered of Medusa’s entry in the book on Greek mythology that was sitting in his room.  “Sight based petrification?”

 

Takami nodded.  “There were a couple of accidents with her early on when they were starting the adjustment process, but up until yesterday the most noteworthy part of her file, medically speaking, is that she’s the only sekirei who wears glasses for non-cosmetic reasons because of her… unique… eyes.  As for what happened, the closest we can figure is that she started reacting, but to no one at all.”

 

Homura blinked.  “It’s not one of her adjusters?”

 

Takami scowled.  “We put her in isolation, we had lab technicians she’s never encountered run tests on her, I ran some of the tests myself along with her usual adjuster, and nothing changed.  Elevated core temperature, dilated pupils, high levels of endorphins…” Takami shook her head before continuing, “Her symptoms match the other sekirei who have reacted while in the lab, but they don’t change in reaction to any variables in her environment.  Everything points to her being in the middle of a reaction to her ashikabi, but it’s clearly not in response to anyone present.  Hell, most of the staff don’t even have the genetic capacity to be ashikabi.  We started screening for that after that fucker Kaoru pulled what he did with 11 and 12.  Stand on the scale,” she barked, Homura scrambling to comply.

 

“But she isn’t winging herself, right?”  Homura couldn’t keep the worry and disquiet out of his voice.  “She isn’t another scrap number?”

 

“Oh?”  Takami raised an eyebrow as she recorded Homura’s weight.  “You seem awfully worried about her.  Already got your eyes on her as another member of your flock?”  She teased.

 

Homura scoffed.  “You know that I’m almost a scrap myself, Dr. Sahashi.  I just want the best for the others, and for them to not end up like me.”  Homura felt the familiar heat of his flames welling up inside him, and with a practiced breath in and out, quelled them once more.  He frowned as he heard the temperature monitors strapped to his chest and wrists chime softly in response to his inner turmoil.  He was painfully aware that the fires generated by his pyrokinesis were frighteningly eager to surge to life at the slightest opportunity but slow to subside, but lately it had felt like the rate at which his power was slipping out of his control was increasing by the week, if not the day.

 

The room was silent, save for the sound of Takami tapping at her tablet and unfastening the temperature monitor bands from Homura.  Finally, she spoke up.

 

“Homura, I know you feel like your situation is hopeless.  I want you to remember though, and tell yourself this every day if you have to, that there is still something for you to look forward to.  Takehito theorized, and I'm inclined to believe him, that joining yourself to an ashikabi would stabilize your condition.”  The white haired doctor’s eyes flickered from the temperature monitors she was putting away in a drawer back to Homura’s bare chest as he pulled his shirt back on.  “Both of your conditions,” she added.

 

Homura nodded glumly.  He absently rubbed his chest as he and Takami walked back to his room, Takami remaining mercifully silent.  A caring and brilliant doctor she may have been, but aside from her talent for putting the fear of god into incompetent subordinates her people skills were only mediocre at best, and they both knew it.  In this case however, she could read the air well enough to tell that anything she told Homura would only be a meaningless platitude at this point.

 

As Homura opened his door with a quick poke of the fingerprint scanner mounted next to it, Takami spoke up once more.

 

“Unless the idiot upstairs,” she growled, before adopting a more sympathetic tone once more, “changes his mind again the Sekirei Plan is probably going to start within a week or so.  You’re probably going to be in the first wave of sekirei released, especially given how right now your body seems to be as stable as it ever gets.  There are going to be a lot of young, vulnerable, and naive sekirei out there, and MBI’s going to be focusing on keeping the knowledge of their existence confined to the city.”  She smiled sadly at Homura’s frown.  “Are you still serious about that 'protector of the unwinged' thing you were talking about last week?”

 

Homura looked into Takami’s tired eyes for a moment before breaking off his gaze to look down, studying the motion of his tendons and skin as he clenched and relaxed his fist in thought.  Coming to a decision, he looked up once more to face Takami full on, letting a practiced smile cross his face as he bowed slightly, reaching out to take hold of one of Takami’s hands, holding it up to just below his lips as he met her now-bemused gaze.

 

“I have certainly given the matter some thought, and I’ve come to a decision.  I swear to you now, that I will act as a protector for all of the unwinged Sekirei until there are none left, or until this body finally fails,” Homura solemnly swore, his lips very nearly grazing Takami’s hand, sounding for all the world like a knight making a vow to his lady.

 

Rolling her eyes, Takami took her hand back and turned to stalk off.  “Alright lady killer, that’s enough out of you.  See if you can’t apply some of that charm of yours to something useful, alright?”

 

Homura let out a short lived chuckle under his breath as he eased his door shut, before turning back toward his room, the smile dropping back off his face.  He settled onto his bed with a sigh, glancing at the books stacked atop the dresser on the other side of his otherwise unornamented room.  Translated copies of  _Memoirs of a Geisha_ ,  _The Once and Future King_ ,  _The Lord of the Rings_  trilogy, several compilations of myths both Japanese and foreign, a collection of Haruki Murakami’s work, and an assortment of recent newspapers and magazines from various publishers.  Also present were a number of books on subjects ranging from the history of tea ceremonies, the history of alcoholic beverages, stage magic, and philosophy.  He briefly eyed the unopened copy of  _Orlando_  where it sat at the bottom of his collection, a present in ill taste (or so he thought once he realized what the book was about) from a lab tech a couple of years ago.  All the sekirei, save for the few who served on MBI’s Disciplinary Squad or who had gone ‘missing’, were confined to the sealed-off interior of MBI’s headquarters in downtown Tokyo.  As a result, all the information the sekirei had about the outside world was restricted to what they could learn from what books or TV shows the adjusters and other lab personnel gave them access to.  Homura happened to prefer books despite the danger that his powers presented, since it was easier to spread them out over hours of confinement in between tests and training sessions to prepare for the Sekirei Plan.

 

Homura couldn’t stop a growl from leaving him as his thoughts once again turned to that ill-conceived obsession that MBI’s head and founder had.  In Homura’s opinion most men or women, upon discovering an intact alien vessel loaded with both advanced technology and preserved eggs and embryos of the species responsible, would have reverse engineered what they could while searching for an ethical and legal way to develop the embryos and create a lasting partnership between the two species.  Perhaps that was altogether too optimistic, though, given the whispers Homura had heard about what happened when other governments learned about the downed sekirei vessel.

 

Hiroto Minaka, however, was not most men.  Intelligent enough to found and run a moderately successful bio-tech firm even before an influx of alien technology catapulted MBI to the top of every field they cared to pursue, but he wasn’t the sort of person Homura would call sane or well adjusted.  It would take a disturbed kind of individual to devise something like the Sekirei Plan, and it would take a madman to actually go through with it.

 

Sekirei like Homura were originally extraterrestrial in origin, but grew to maturity in the depths of MBI’s secret laboratories.  In comparison to humans, the 108 sekirei were all significantly stronger, faster, and more durable, even before factoring in the more fantastical abilities that a good many of them had.  Control over fire, water, or other elements, intuitive mastery of a particular weapon, or even more exotic effects.  Perhaps Hiroto Minaka was onto something when he hailed the sekirei as the ‘heralds of a new age of gods.’

 

The catch was that sekirei couldn’t mate with each other.  Well, technically they could, but they wouldn’t want to, as only humans could be ashikabi.  When a sekirei met a human with the potential to be their ashikabi, their ‘destined one,’ they would immediately know it.  A strange quirk of sekirei biology, whether it was native to their species or if Minaka had had it added to them, Homura didn’t know, but once a sekirei started reacting to a compatible human they would be compelled to kiss their new ashikabi.  Once they did so, the sekirei would be ‘winged,’ a thus-far unbreakable bond between human and alien that would last until the day either of them died.  Part of the process of being winged meant that, theoretically, the newly-winged sekirei would become more powerful, to better defend their new mate.  Most people would be somewhat concerned by the implications of such a system, while others might sigh at the romanticism of it all.

 

Hiroto Manaka, on the other hand, laughed and devised the Sekirei Plan, a scheme by which the sekirei would be released into one of the most crowded cities in modern Japan, allowed to find their ashikabis, and then be forced to duel until only one sekirei remained to receive a vague and unspecified prize.

 

Needless to say, Homura didn’t like Minaka at all.  He’d idly considered putting an end to the S-Plan and the lunatic running it a few times before, but ultimately he’d had to accept that there was no way to get up to Minaka’s office and plant a fireball in his laughing face without running headlong into the entire Disciplinary Squad on the way, and there was no getting past them.

 

All Homura could do was heed Dr. Sahashi’s request, and try to ensure that all of his younger ‘siblings’, so to speak, got a chance to live happily with their soulmates before the inevitable happened.  Defective and lonely as he was, he just wanted some manner of legacy that he could be proud of.

 

Well, he also wouldn't have said no to finally being free of the uncertainty of not knowing whether today would be the day that he woke up as a woman instead of a man.

> _This update brought to you by: Ryune.  Please consider supporting me on Patreon, so that I can bring you more of the content that you like._
> 
>  


	2. Chapter 2

Dr. Sahashi had been good to her word: as sekirei #6, Homura was officially released into the city only a few days after that meeting, along with numbers 9 and 11 through 20.  Part of Homura’s unspoken question about the skipped numbers was answered when he arrived at the address Takami had slipped him the day before his release.  Izumo Inn was a quiet, traditionally styled two-story boarding house in the northern quadrant of Shinto Tokyo, yet it seemed to have a strange tendency to draw sekirei to it.  There were already two more sekirei in residence there when Homura first arrived, another two started showing up alongside their ashikabi for meals not long after Homura arrived, #3 dropped by sometimes when she needed to sleep off a hangover, and then there was the landlady, Miya.  Miya was… something else entirely.

 

A month passed much faster than Homura had ever thought it could, and he found himself settled into a routine.  He worked nights at a host club using the alias ‘Kagari’, entertaining women tired from a long days work with tea and conversation, all while keeping an eye out on the off chance that one evening one of his clients would make his heart start racing in a particular way.  Aside from the benefits of being able to cast a wide net, this way he was able to keep up with the 50,000 yen rent for his little ground-floor room, since although MBI had provided each sekirei with a supposedly unlimited cash card, MBI cards were the one form of payment that the landlady refused to accept.  On his off hours, and occasionally during the day when he could drag himself out of bed, Homura would patrol the city, keeping an eye out for his fellow sekirei.  So far he had already made a bit of a name for himself as the Sekirei Guardian, although thankfully there hadn’t been too much call for his services.  Thus far, Homura hadn’t seen any sekirei trying to press gang another sekirei into service to their ashikabi, or any major hostilities even between the winged sekirei.  Of the roughly two dozen sekirei who were currently out and about, most seemed to be either focused on the search for their ashikabi, or were going through a honeymoon period with the same.

 

Of course, there were exceptions.  Sekirei #9, Tsukiumi, had declared Homura to be her rival whom she would one day defeat and would loudly inform him of such every time their paths crossed, but thus far that was still a problem for another day.  On the other hand, more and more often the lightning twins Hikari and Hibiki had been harassing any unwinged sekirei they could find, and Homura was starting to give serious thoughts to somehow acquiring a tracking device just to keep tabs on where those two were at any given moment.

 

With the same ease with which a human might climb a set of stairs, Homura jumped from one rooftop to one across the street, his momentum carrying him across the roof in one- then two, long strides as his feet near soared through the air.  He came to the far edge of the roof and alighted on the rim of the roof there, letting his prior speed compress and contract his legs into springs as he came to a stop, before pushing off once more, sending him hurtling up in an arc that lasted only a second before he lightly landed atop the bare girders of a construction site.  Homura wasn’t quite sure what this site was going to become, only that right now the girders and bare concrete already stood half again as tall as every other building in this neighborhood of Shin Tokyo, which meant the view from the top was excellent.  Just another couple of bouncing jumps were enough to bring Homura up to the very top, where he stopped for a moment to settle his breathing as he looked out over the sun-bright city.

 

If there were anyone else atop the half-built structure to see him, they would have said that Homura was the very image of a mysterious vigilante at the moment.  Most sekirei had a tendency to dress in striking and distinctive clothes that, particularly for the more voluptuous of them, often came close to violating public decency laws.  Homura wasn’t sure how much of that was because of any instincts native to the sekirei, like the bright plumage and displays put on by tropical birds, and how much was due to Minaka’s subtle manipulations to bring about a better spectacle, but either way that was just one more way in which he was set apart from the other sekirei.  Granted, Homura wouldn’t deny that he was somewhat vain about his appearance himself, it was just that his personal preferences happened to align with a simpler and more practical style.  Homura’s battle attire was a good example of that design philosophy at work: a slightly more rugged pair of black slacks and white dress shirt than he wore for day-to-day life or work, with a long black coat worn over top.  Combined with his naturally white hair, this produced a distinctly monochromatic appearance that was both visually striking and comfortable, with an appealing minimalistic charm.  A black neck warmer that covered his nose and mouth provided a slight measure of disguise, while also protecting his breathing from some of the smoke and dust that inevitably resulted from the fights that he got into.

 

Seeing a bright blue and violet flash from the level of the rooftops about half a mile away, Homura realized that there was a good chance another one of those fights was in his immediate future.  He couldn’t be certain that it was Hikari and Hibiki, but he had seen them in action enough already to know who was most likely responsible for the lightning striking a rooftop in the middle of a cloudless day.

 

Easily loping across the rooftops to get closer, Homura had been ready to introduce himself with a quick blast of fire to separate the twins from their victim, only to be drawn up short by what he actually saw there.

 

On the handful of occasions when he had caught #11 and #12 attacking a lone unwinged sekirei, it was always the twins who would be on the offensive with their coordinated lightning strikes while their victim either frantically dodged or tried to close into melee range.  In a reversal of the usual pattern, Hikari and Hibiki were the ones ducking and dodging frantically as they were chased back and forth across the top of the office building, barely able to pause long enough to throw crackling bolts towards their pursuer before they had to leap to the other side to dodge the blur that was chasing them.

 

For a moment, Homura was torn.  On the one hand, this mystery sekirei clearly had the situation in hand.  On the other hand, even if the lightning twins left that rooftop and ran their opponent would probably catch them and defeat them.  The question then, was did Homura have a duty to bail the twins out of the danger they’d gotten themselves into, even knowing that they would likely go back to attacking unwinged sekirei once they’d had some time to assuage their pride?

 

Homura’s inner musing was broken by a sudden scream from the rooftop as the twins stood still a little too long to charge up a bolt of lightning.  They had just perched themselves on top of a boxy AC unit on top of the roof, holding hands while their free hands reached out towards the oncoming figure.  There was a brief flicker of light emanating from both their clasped and outstretched hands before the air cracked and split from the force of the lightning bolts that flew from their hands, lancing straight into their pursuer as he leapt through the air towards the pair.  Homura instinctively winced, before his eyes widened as he saw the figure barrel straight through the double dose of high voltage.  Hikari and Hibiki were somewhat unique as far as sekirei went, in that they could amplify each other’s powers by working together.  That combined with their experience in fighting (solely by virtue of having picked so many fights this early in the Sekirei Plan) meant that they became like a well oiled machine on the battlefield.  Homura could usually intimidate them into leaving their victims alone just by virtue of having more power by himself than they did even working together, but he’d had to fight them a few times before they accepted that.  From painful experience he knew that even a glancing hit from just one of their coordinated bolts would leave him with a nasty case of pins-and-needles, and the occasional involuntary twitch, in his limbs for hours afterward.

 

The stranger, on the other hand, seemingly hadn’t gotten that particular memo, as he soared straight towards the panicking twins, coiling sparks of electricity crashing against the long brown coat he wore like waves against a breaker.  The twins started to push off to jump away as fast as they could, but Hikari was a little too slow to draw back her hand as the stranger shot out a hand and seized her wrist in a firm grip that still looked to be crackling with electricity, prompting her to shriek in surprise while her sister yelled out in panic.

 

Almost in the same instant that he had captured Hikari’s hand, the man in brown yanked it towards him, pulling the trapped girl in between him and Hibiki even as he swung one leg up to firmly plant his boot into Hikari’s stomach.  As Hibiki raised her free hand up, once more crackling with a charged up bolt, the man in brown adjusted the angle he was holding Hikari’s arm at, letting the force of his kick push the coughing and wheezing girl straight into her sister’s line of fire.

 

Screaming in frustration and fear, Hibiki let go of her sister, jumping past her sister’s back to get a clear shot.  As soon as she did, the man in brown lowered his foot from Hikari’s gut, twisting his whole body to follow the motion of his foot as he slammed it down, his unoccupied left hand rising up into a brutal haymaker delivered straight to Hibiki’s right temple.  At the same moment that Hibiki sent a bolt lancing out towards him, the momentum of the stranger’s combined foot stomp and punch meant that he had twisted enough that the bolt lashed through the air about a foot above his hunched over body, even as he released Hikari’s wrist to allow her dazed form to collapse in a heap.

 

Hibiki stepped backwards off of the metal box shakily, the normally composed girl breathing rapidly as she held up her shaking hands, electricity faintly flickering between her gloved digits as she stumbled upon landing, continuing to backstep.  The stranger slowly straightened up, something about the movement reminding Homura of a nature documentary he had once seen that showed an alligator walking between from one pond to another.  There was a similar feeling of inevitability, of leisurely movement that could quickly turn into an explosion of violence.

 

Almost before he realized it, Homura was leaping from his rooftop to land between the two, some unknown instinct pushing him to intrude.  He felt a strange pressure as he crossed over the rim of the roof, his own coat and hair ruffling briefly in a gust of wind that had not been there before.  His feet settled down on the concrete of the roof with a deceptively soft tap as he held a hand up towards both of the conscious parties.

 

Hibiki nearly choked in incredulity.  “Now you too?  This day just keeps getting better!”  She griped, still holding up her hands but no longer emitting sparks from her rubber-covered hands.

 

Homura didn’t really notice that, however.  He was busy staring up at where the stranger in brown was still standing atop the AC unit.  The man was wearing a brown coat that hung down to his knees with something dark grey over his legs and feet and something black covering his head and face, and that was about all that could be told for certain.  Everything else about the man was obscured by a strange haze that surrounded him, like a cross between static on a TV display and heat haze.  It made the stranger hard to look at directly, and even as he stared up at the stranger he could feel his eyes strain as they fought between wanting to look away from the anomaly, and wanting to stare straight at it.  The thing that struck him the most though, was how beneath the haze there was something about the stranger that was… familiar.

 

In the same instant that Homura had taken in the sight of the stranger, the man himself crouched slightly, before leaping off and away from the rooftop with a practiced motion.  Homura opened his mouth to call after him, but by the time he realized that he didn’t know what he was going to yell after the stranger, he had already crossed enough rooftops to carry him out of earshot.

 

Belatedly, he muttered, “Who was that?”

 

“Hikari?  Hikari, are you all right?  Come on Hikari!”  Homura snapped out his confused daze as he realized Hibiki was trying to shake her sister back into consciousness.  Turning, she yelled over her shoulder at Homura.  “Don’t just stand there Guardian, help her!”

 

A soft moan from Hikari then drew her attention back to her sister, as her mostly-identical twin started to open her eyes, before shutting them in a wince as her hands gingerly pressed against her belly.  Hikari and Hibiki were both wearing tight fitting rubber suits that left their navels and shoulders exposed.  Hikari’s was a rich violet color, while Hibiki’s was purple, and from what he could see of it through Hikari’s fingers, the boot print on her navel was already settling somewhere between those two colors.

 

“Can you get back to your Ashikabi on your own?” Homura inquired, voice muffled only slightly by the face mask he wore as part of his ‘Sekirei Guardian’ uniform.

 

Hikari groaned as she lightly rubbed her temple, Hibiki bracing her shoulders to help hold her up in a sitting position.  “I think so,” she finally ground out, “I just need a moment to get this ringing out of my head.”

 

Homura nodded.  “Since we’re not going anywhere then, I have a few questions for the two of you.”

 

It was at that moment that the fabric of Homura’s coat spontaneously ignited.

 

“Shit!”

 

_This update brought to you by: Ryune. Please consider supporting me on Patreon, so that I can bring you more of the content that you like._


	3. Chapter 3

That evening, Homura had just barely arrived at his workplace when he got the news he had been requested by name for a night out.

 

“Who was it?”  Homura wasn’t overly concerned.  While it was unusual, it wasn’t unheard of for a host bar’s clientele to ask for a host to accompany them for a night on the town.  Technically and legally, paid dates like that weren’t supposed to end in a visit to a hotel room or the client’s house, but the tacit understanding was that there was nothing wrong with such an encounter happening ‘off the clock.’  However, while Homura had his own reasons to avoid getting too intimate with any of his clientele, he had a feeling he might knew who was behind this particular order.

 

“Dr. Sahashi.  Don’t call her that though, unless you want to get an earful about how she doesn’t get enough recognition at work,” Homura’s manager told him.  “She’s a semi-regular here and a few other places.  She mostly just wants to unwind, have a few drinks while talking at an attentive ear, that sort of thing.”  The middle-aged woman smirked and patted Homura’s shoulder while leaning in with a conspiratory whisper.  “You can be as shy as you like, Kagari dear, she’s not the kind to make bookings with one of us and a love hotel in the same evening.”

 

Homura hid his eye roll with a soft smile.  “Oh, don’t say that.  You never know, perhaps she’s just been looking for someone with my particular charm.”  He shared a smile with the manager as she chuckled, shooing him out towards the entrance and the official looking black car parked there.

 

Homura took one last moment to check that his suit and tie were on straight, scratched an itch on his chest, and then strolled out through the October evening to the waiting car.  He paused for a moment after opening the back door upon seeing the dress Takami was wearing: the very picture of the ubiquitous little black dress, nothing too fancy or risque, but it was certainly different from the lab coat he was used to seeing her wearing.

 

Seeing the direction of his gaze, Takami raised an eyebrow as Homura settled into the backseat next to her.  “I thought I should look the part.  Besides, I’m allowed to have a life outside of MBI.”

 

“I didn’t say anything.  Although,” Homura smirked, “I will say that I learned quite a bit about your preferences from my manager.  You’ve got something of a reputation, you know.”

 

“Watch it,” Takami warned, producing a cigarette from her purse.  Instinctively, Homura reached over, producing a small flame within easy reach for her with a quick flick of his fingers.  Takami chuckled as she lit up, then nodded her thanks to Homura as she took her first drag.  “Is that something else you learned working there?”  She asked, motioning with her head to where the host club was growing smaller in the rear window as the car pulled away.

 

Homura nodded, settling back into his seat.  “It makes an excellent party trick, that’s for sure.  I’ve noticed that when little tricks with cards and the like only get polite applause, actually being able to make fire without using sleight of hand usually gets their attention.”

 

“It sounds like you’re fitting in well, ‘Kagari’.”

 

Homura couldn’t help a faint blush as he admitted, “I’m on track to make it to the top ten list among my coworkers.  Maybe I’ll even get to the number one spot.”

 

Takami smiled fondly, before her expression settled back into business mode.  “You can probably guess why I wanted to see you tonight.”

 

“Besides my innate charm?”  Takami shot him a sharp look at that, and Homura tamped down on the flirtatious patterns he’d picked up over the past month of work.  “The mystery sekirei that 11 and 12 encountered.”

 

Takami nodded.  “I got a call not long after your message from Seo,” Takami’s voice dipped slightly into a more malevolent tone as she mentioned the former MBI employee, before returning to her usual business-first tone, “asking a few pointed questions about Sekirei with unconventional abilities.  The problem is, I’m not so sure that what the three of you saw earlier was a sekirei.”

 

Homura stared at her for a moment, and when he spoke it was slow and deliberate.  “I saw that person jump from one roof to another from a standing start.  While on the attack, he was more than able to keep up with the twins, and he essentially knocked out a sekirei with one hit.  What else could he be, because he certainly isn’t human, not with that kind of strength and speed.”

 

“And now you see what's been so frustrating about the last five hours, because while that person is clearly something beyond human, he is not one of  _our_  sekirei.”  The geneticist put an odd emphasis on that last point.  “His recorded abilities don’t match any of the 108, and are clearly distinct from the powers of the few male sekirei who do exist.  More than that, all of the male sekirei were either still in the MBI facility at the time of the incident, or had other alibis,” Takami mentioned, gesturing towards Homura.

 

Homura frowned.  “Are you sure?  I know, or at least I’d heard, that there were some sekirei from the first Disciplinary Squad who’d struck out on their own.”

 

“The only one of those who is male was #5, Mutsu, and ever since he was winged a week and a half ago he’s been stuck to his ashikabi’s side.  If nothing else, he doesn’t have the powers that this ‘Shadow,’ as some people have started calling him, displayed.”

 

Homura reached up to scratch his chest, caught himself doing so, and changed the motion into a search for his own pack of cigarettes.  Igniting one with a thought and a flick of his finger, he spent a moment contemplating the glowing embers, feeling them out with his power, before releasing the fire to burn on its own.

 

“Are you so sure that the guy is, well, a guy?  I was looking right at them, and I could barely tell that they were wearing a coat and not a dress through all that haze, and not all the female sekirei are as, ah, well curved as Hikari or Tsukiumi are.”

 

“Hikari and Hibiki heard him talking.  Unless he has a voice changer under that haze of his, he’s male.”

 

“What did he say to them?”

 

“From what Seo said?  After 11 and 12 had been chasing him for a while, he shouted something the couldn’t quite understand after landing on that roof where you found them and then they suddenly found themselves unable to leave that rooftop.  At that point he then yelled at them, and this is a direct quote according to Seo, ‘Welcome to the Thunderdome, bitches.’”

 

“‘Thunderdome?’”  Homura blinked in confusion.

 

“From what we’ve found, it’s a reference to an old American movie where the Thunderdome is a cage that two people are locked in while they fight to the death.”

 

“But then- wait.”  Homura frowned.  “They couldn’t leave?”

 

“That’s what Seo told us.  Apparently, until you arrived on the roof, they couldn’t see anything beyond the bounds of that rooftop, and the idea of trying to leave just didn’t occur to them.”

 

For the first time since he had started smoking a month ago, Homura felt himself coughing on the smoke.  “That’s... terrifying, but if that’s his sekirei power, then what was that distortion around him?”

 

“Officially?  We think he’s a rogue sekirei with a limited mind-control ability that lets him designate areas or people as ‘unviewable.’  Unofficially?  We don’t know who or what the hell he is, and it doesn’t help that none of our satellites were watching that part of Tokyo when the fight happened.”

 

“Well… damn.”  Homura took a deep drag, feeling the bite of smoke against his lungs and throat.

 

There was a long pause, before Takami spoke up once more.

 

“Those things might just kill you, you know.  We don’t really have the sample size to determine what effects nicotine and tar have on sekirei on a long term basis.”

 

Homura laughed a short, bitter laugh.  “Hypocrite.  Besides, I’m dying anyway, might as well enjoy myself while I can.”

 

Takami’s head snapped around to stare at Homura, any kindness gone from her expression.  She was just opening her mouth when Homura held a hand to cut her off.

 

“My left arm caught fire just after that stranger left.  No warning, no prior power use, one second I was talking to the twins, the next my sleeve was on fire.  It’s not the first time that’s happened, either.  A week ago, I was having a heated discussion with #9 when all of a sudden a fire started in the palm of my hand when I wasn’t even trying to light anything.”  He breathed out slowly, suddenly feeling much older than his roughly 20 years.  “It’s not just my unconcious fire, either.  It takes more effort to rein in my fireblasts, too.  I can light a candle or a smoke,” he held up his cigarette for emphasis, before tapping it out on the ashtray between him and Takami, “or I can imitate a flamethrower.  I can’t do anything in between the two, at least not without having to practically meditate to focus enough to pull it off.  I think it’s safe to say that I’m actually breaking down this time,” he mused in a carefully blank tone of voice.

 

For a moment, there was once more dead silence in the backseat.  Homura stared straight ahead, trying not to look at Takami, but he could feel her stare as surely as if she were able to shoot lasers from her eyes.  Even the faint sounds of the engine died down as the car rolled to a stop, seemingly having reached their destination.  Finally, Takami broke the silence once more.

 

“Well, I paid to take you out to a bar, so I suppose we should get to drinking,” she said in a choked voice that hinted at the volume of what she wanted to say, but couldn’t quite force herself to.  “Before we get too muddle brained, is there anything else that you remember about the stranger that didn’t fit in your message?”

 

Homura thought about it as he stepped out of the car, hurrying around the back of the car to open Takami’s door and hold a hand out to help her out.  “There is one thing,” he hesitantly started.

 

At Takami’s inquisitive raised eyebrow, Homura took a last drag on the cigarette, letting his power flare the fire to just a little hotter than it should have been, burning it down to the filter in just a second.  Dropping the spent smoke to the ground and stomping it out with a quick twist of his foot, Homura made himself smile crookedly.

 

“Based on the footprint he left on Hikari’s gut, I’d say he probably wears a size 11.”

 

Takami had to reach up to properly dope slap the alien.

 

_When Homura finally fell asleep that night, inebriated from booze and exhaustion alike, he dreamed of a burning city beneath a sky thick with black and crimson smoke.  The faint silver shine of the moon could barely be seen beyond the clouds that coated the sky, although even as Homura watched the silver glow dimmed as the clouds over the moon’s face grew thicker as more smoke rose up to join them._

 

_“I suppose this must be a metaphor,” Homura observed, with that detached sense of insight that comes from realizing that one is dreaming without waking up.  Homura glanced left and right, taking in the imposing architecture.  It was like nothing Homura had ever seen in any travel show, book, or movie; all looming towers and soot-stained stone bricks, decorated with elaborate gothic spikes on the overhangs and the edges of roofs.  Where there weren’t stone paved streets, the ground abruptly dropped away to form great yawning chasms between different city blocks, bridged only by worn and scorched bridges that wound backwards and forwards between and around the clustered buildings.  Dotting the chaotic web of wooden ramparts, stone plazas, and Victorian tenements were the fires.  In some places, the buildings themselves were ablaze, mounds of smoke sluggishly climbing out of the natural chimneys formed by the spiked minarets and steep walls.  Wherever there were gaps to be seen in the skyline however, crude stakes and crosses vied with smoldering trees for space, while yet more burning effigies could be seen affixed to the stakes carved out of the support columns for the walkways and bridges.  Or at least, Homura hoped they were just effigies._

 

_A clattering noise caused Homura to spin around in time to see two figures in long old-fashioned coats hurl themselves through a gateway just behind him, both of them quickly and smoothly turning about to grab hold of what remained of the dilapidated doors to slam them shut.  The taller of the two slammed a hand on the seam where the two met while the other, a woman, spun around to grab a large plank off the ground, a few strands of violet hair flying about her head as she did._

 

_“Algiz!”  The man holding the door shouted, as briefly a shape like an upside-down arrow flashed across the wood where he was touching it, before he stepped back to let the woman slam the makeshift-crossbeam she had found in place.  No sooner had she done so than there was a tremendous crash as something barrelled into the other side of the door at high speeds.  The sound of the crash was highlighted by a cut-off roar that sounded as though it had come from the maw of a very angry dog.  An angry dog of the approximate size and mass as a main battle tank and that was in the grip of rabies to boot._

 

_When a single massive talon the length of Homura’s hand poked through a gap in the boards of the door, accompanied by the sound of frenzied scratching and growls, Homura got the unsettling feeling that his guess about the roar being made by a monstrously sized canine might be closer to the truth than he quite wanted it to be.   The roars rose up in pitch as the creature started clawing and battering at the door more franticly, the wood flashing with a strange light like the film on a puddle of oil as it resisted the monster’s flailing claws.  Finally, the sound of bone scratching over wood slowed as the growls lowered in pitch, before the single claw that had passed through the barrier slowly withdrew._

 

_The two runners slowly stepped back from the door, watching it warily as the sound of their breaths in and out momentarily drowned out the ambient crackling sound of the fire, before the sound of a large creature slowly plodding away on more than one set of legs emitted from behind the door._

 

_At this point, the shorter of the two turned to her companion and asked, in a quiet and calm tone that belied the faint notes of aggravation, “Is it really worth staying on that Powder Keg’s good side if this is what comes of it?”  As she spoke, she reached out and grabbed hold of the man’s arm, holding it up and pulling up the sleeve enough to expose a weeping gash on his forearm.   No sooner had the wound been exposed however, than it had started to draw itself closed, the trails of blood that had oozed out over the distinct lines of the man’s muscles retreating back on themselves, like snakes pulling their heads back into their holes.  Within a couple of seconds, there were no signs of any wound beyond the still torn sleeve that the woman was holding, and an array of red and black stains running the length of the ulna._

 

_The man shrugged, wiggling his fingers as if to make sure that the tendons were all still attached, before pulling his hand up out of the woman’s grip to rest it on her shoulder with a comforting squeeze.  “He’s one less person that we have to fight, and between us, the other hunters, and all the beasties?  The population of this town is going to be low enough by the time we’re done.”  The man spoke with a rough voice, each syllable he spoke undercut by an imperceptible growl and muffled slightly by the disturbingly red-tinted scarf wound around his face.  “Besides, this is nothing we haven’t done before.”_

 

_At that, Homura could contain his curiosity no more.  “So I can guess what the fire and the ruined city means.  I suppose you two might be a projection of my duties as Guardian, but what I can’t figure out is what the monster is supposed to represent.  I don’t suppose either of the two of you know?”  Homura asked, partly out of curiosity, partly rhetorically, but also partly to distract himself from the new rush of flames that were even now engulfing one of the buildings on the edges of the plaza they all stood in._

 

_The moment Homura started to speak, the two dream figures reacted oddly.  The woman turned, startled, staring right at Homura with wide eyes.  The man, on the other hand, turned his head to look almost straight up, staring towards the sky.  Homura couldn’t focus too much on him, however, as he found himself looking back at the woman.  Underneath a slightly battered hat shaped something like a tricorn and above the high and stiff collar of the woman’s thick coat, a pair of bright eyes studied him intently from behind a pair of utilitarian, round glasses.  He could only just barely make out her eye color at this distance, and even then only because the lilac irises were bright enough to stand out compared to the yellow and leather brown tones of her coat and garb._

 

_The woman cocked her head to one side, and then spoke slowly and carefully, reaching behind her with a practiced but slow motion.  “Dear, is this something of your doing?”_

 

_The man hummed pensively, lowering his gaze to match Homura’s as he took his hand off the woman’s shoulder to hook his thumbs in the pockets of his pants, underneath the black, shawl-like coat he wore.  “Huh.  I thought something seemed off about all this.”_

 

_Homura blinked.  “Wait, what are you talking about?  This is just a fever dream that my brain came up with because I’ve been thinking a lot about my mortality lately, right?”_

 

_The man drew one of his hands up out of his pocket, and held it up in front of his face, studying his nails.  “So that’s where all the confusion is coming from.”  Homura couldn’t quite make out the man’s eye color at this distance, but somehow he felt too anchored to the spot where he stood to try moving closer._

 

_The man turned his hand, bracing his thumb and middle finger against each other.  His fingers were left bare by the rags wrapped around the man’s palm and metacarpals, exposing light skin turned grey and black by soot and other stains._

 

_“You think this is your dream that you’re having.”_

 

 _The man in black snapped his fingers_ and Homura woke up to the sound of Uzume stomping up and down the stairs in Izumo Inn.  A few rays of sunlight lazily filtered through the curtains he had drawn across the window, laying a single golden finger across Homura’s suit jacket sprawled across the floor.

 

He lay there on his bed for a minute, staring up at the ceiling for a long moment before finally muttering aloud.

 

“What was that supposed to be, anyway?”

 

_This update brought to you by: Ryune. Please consider supporting me on Patreon, so that I can bring you more of the content that you like._


	4. Chapter 4

Homura had almost forgotten that strange dream by the time a month had gone by.  He hadn’t had any dreams quite like it, but then again he’d made a point out of not drinking to the same degree that he had that night.  Sekirei might be hardier than humans, but as his occasional encounters with #03 had taught Homura, alcohol could certainly affect them just as much.  In addition, he’d been very busy both at work and in his duties as Sekirei Guardian. 

 

Thus, Homura had more or less dismissed those events as just an oddly realistic dream when one evening in November, events lined up to let him have dinner at Izumo Inn with the rest of the guests rather than having to grab something on his way to work.

 

Working long hours at night that became even longer when you factored in the hours Homura would spend on patrol throughout Shin Tokyo as the Guardian, Homura was more likely to grab a light meal on his way to or at the host club for dinner.  Oftentimes the closest he came to eating with the rest of Izumo’s residents was when the landlady kept a portion saved away for him to reheat whenever it was that he ended up getting home.  This particular evening, on the other hand, Homura wasn’t expected in at work at all, and so he briefly debated the merits of getting to eat Miya’s cooking while it was still hot and fresh versus getting an early circuit of the rooftops in the north-east of the city. 

 

It wasn’t a debate that lasted very long.

 

Leaving his suits for work (both kinds) in his room, Homura drifted towards the dining room in his preferred casual outfit of a buttoned up shirt and slacks.  From the sound of it, it seemed dinner was about to be served, although it did seem a little louder than usual.  Was there someone else visiting?

 

As Homura slid open the door to the dining room and took in the scene there, he observed that there were two new people, in addition to Uzume, with place settings laid out for two more people, one at the head of the table, and one next to Uzume, opposite the two newcomers.

 

Uzume broke off her conversation with the newcomers to wave casually at Homura.  “Hey, you staying here tonight?  Or is it casual night at the host club?”

 

Uzume was another sekirei, #10 to be precise, and like seemingly every other female sekirei she was almost unnaturally beautiful compared to the average human woman.  She was currently lazing on her cushion at the low table, in her usual outfit of a star-printed purple t-shirt and cut off jeans.  Her long hair was mostly sorted into two ponytails, one going from the back of her head and one from the side, with the exception of her wild, unorganized bangs.  Combined with the smile that seemed to be her natural resting expression and her current pose with one elbow on the table and her head leaning on that same hand, she overall had a relaxed and friendly air.

 

Homura nodded a greeting to her as he moved to settle onto the cushion next to her.  “A lot of the other hosts have been booked for a private party, so there won’t be room for those of us who weren’t picked.  So I can afford to take my time with dinner here tonight.”

 

Uzume nodded as she listened, picking up her drink as she did.  “Ah well, if it had to happen, it’s good that it happened tonight.  This way, you get to meet the new tenants along with the rest of us!”  She picked her head up off her hand long enough to gesture like a showgirl towards the pair on the other side of the table.  “This here’s Medusa and Eruraz, they just moved in earlier today.”

 

“It’s Erilaz, actually.  Just call me Patrick, though, or whatever’s easiest for you.”  Homura turned his attention to the speaker, and looked him up and down.  He was a tall, lean, pale-skinned man, although his Japanese was much better than the occasional American or English tourist who wandered into Homura’s host club.  There was definitely an accent, but it was rather faint, only a slight overemphasis on the occasional second or first syllable where there shouldn’t have been emphasis.  Physically, Patrick was somewhat lanky, although his wide shoulders and forearms bulged out against a deep red long-sleeved shirt enough to suggest a well developed set of muscles stretched over his bones.  His hair was a dark brown that verged on black, shot with grey in the temples, cropped short all over but with no noteworthy style beyond that.  His face had a somewhat lean and rugged cast to it, emphasized further by the beard that ran the length of his jaw.  Although the beard itself was almost shockingly long and thick compared to what Homura was used to seeing, it had been bunched together into a series of smaller bushels held together by plain wooden beads, giving it a look that was both restrained and ornamental.  Combined with Erilaz’s long fingers, the sight of the half-dozen loosely dangling hair tendrils made Homura think about an octopus for some reason.  Styling aside, his beard was still the most colorful part of the strange American, in that there were two distinct colors present.  The predominant hue was a bronze that was just a shade closer to red than the rest of his hair, but towards the back of his jaw on both sides enough hairs came in white that it gave the rearmost plaits on both side a distinct silver color.  As far as age goes, he looked to be somewhere in his early or mid twenties, although between the stoic calmness in his green eyes, the salt and pepper in his hair, and the tired tone of his voice, Homura had the impression that Patrick could likely pass for being much older if he cared to try.

 

The woman next to him was also tall and willowy, even when kneeling comfortably on a cushion.  Her hair was long enough that even when loosely tied off in a ponytail the very end of it pooled on the ground behind her, and was a shade of light amethyst that had no right looking as natural on anyone as it did on her.  Contrasting that, her dark turtleneck and jeans along with her glasses made her look like a woman who would be more comfortable with a book and an armchair to curl up in than an elaborate dress and music to dance to.  Her face had a classical sort of beauty that made her look timeless, although Homura had a strong feeling that she was almost exactly twenty years old.  Her eyes were closed as she contentedly sipped at a cup of tea, although as Homura watched she cracked one eye open to glance at him as though she could feel his gaze on her.  Her eyes were a light, almost iridescent shade of magenta that reminded something in the back of his mind of a predatory reptile, cold and shiny.

 

Wrenching his eyes away from Medusa’s (and now Homura was certain the name wasn’t a coincidence), Homura saw that Erilaz had a hand extended across the table for a handshake.  Gingerly, Homura accepted it, trying to project the cool and personable mask that he had put together over long hours of practice at the host club.

 

“Kagari,” he introduced himself, noting that Erilaz’s hand felt cold in his as he shook it, despite the bandages wrapped over and around his palm and the back of his hand.  Over the last month, Homura’s power had been slipping out of his grasp just enough that his body temperature always seemed to be just a couple degrees over what it should have been.  Even by his standards, however, Erilaz’s skin definitely felt unusually cold as he firmly shook Homura’s own hand.  Cold enough that as Homura took his hand back and scratched his chest so he could discreetly flex it, he could swear he felt the pins and needles of hypothermia, even as his stomach flipped and twisted disconcertingly.  He must have been hungrier than he thought to be feeling like this.  “I usually work nights, so I may not be around for dinner very often, or awake during the morning, but it is a pleasure to meet you.”

 

Erilaz hummed thoughtfully.  “Fair and understandable enough.  I’ve had my share of odd or inconvenient work schedules before.”  His voice was a smooth and clear tenor, not at all the growling rumble that Homura expected from as wild-looking a man as him, but it was still exotic enough to be fascinating to Homura all the same. 

 

As Homura reached for the tea set to pour himself a cup, he casually asked, “Do you mind if I ask whether Erilaz is your personal or family name?” stumbling a bit over the foreign syllables but making a good effort nonetheless.

 

“Family.  I’m not that used to standing on ceremony though, so like I said, just call me whatever makes you comfortable.”  Erilaz, or Patrick rather, smiled gently.

 

Uzume grinned.  “No arguments from me on that, bro!”

 

Medusa raised an eyebrow as she set down her tea.  “Bro?”  Homura absently noticed that her eyes didn’t seem quite so oppressively vibrant when they were both open, but that there was still something off about them.  Something about the pupils that wasn’t quite right…

 

Uzume shrugged.  “Well, we’re all in the same house, so that makes us sort of family, doesn’t it?  Besides, he’s got that kind of bro feeling to him.”

 

Patrick reached up to scratch the back of his neck.  “I mean, it’s far from the worst thing I’ve been called,” he noted wryly.  “But let’s not get into that now.”

 

The sound of a door sliding open drew everyone’s attention to where Miya was just stepping out of the kitchen, food balanced on the trays held in her hands.  The landlady of Izumo Inn was unassuming at first glance, or at least as unassuming as is possible for someone with purple hair.  Petite and polite, Miya Asama wore the traditional clothes of a shrine maiden: loose hakama pants, a hip-length haori held shut by a wide purple sash, and a white ribbon to hold her hair up in a ponytail.  Her soft features were formed into a soft smile as she set down the trays to reveal a full spread of rice bowls, hot dashi soup, tempura vegetables and protein, pickled vegetables, and other dishes.  Homura was slightly distracted from his anticipation of the upcoming meal by the realization that Miya’s smile became just a little bit chillier whenever her gaze happened to fall upon Patrick.

 

“Let’s eat!”

 

A few minutes passed in relative silence, save for the click of chopsticks and spoons against the dishware, and the sound of chewing interspersed with pleased hums and mutters of contentment.

 

As Homura spooned out another portion of tonkatsu for himself, he decided to break the silence.

 

“So, Mr Patrick, what brings you to Shin Tokyo?  Business or pleasure?”

 

Patrick finished gulping down a mouthful of soup, before setting his bowl down.  “More like chance, really.  I suppose you could say I came here by simple happenstance, and now that I’m here I’ve found my own reasons to stay.”

 

Homura nodded, and out of the corner of his eye he caught Medusa studying him intently.  He met her gaze, making a slight motion towards Patrick and then towards her, raising an eyebrow in a silent question.

 

The quiet woman raised her own eyebrow in response, before nodding in silent confirmation.

 

So then.  Patrick was an ashikabi and Medusa was the same sekirei that he had heard about on occasion from Takami and the other MBI staff.  #21, if he remembered right.  Homura added another mental tick to the running list of evidence that something about the Izumo Inn attracted sekirei like hummingbirds to a particularly juicy flower.

 

Uzume, having either picked up on the subtext or missed it completely, changed the subject.

 

“Your happenstance wasn’t a job of some sort, was it?  I’ve heard a lot of talk about how there’s been turmoil in the workplace here since MBI started buying up the whole damn city.  I wouldn’t have thought a foreign company would be able to get enough of a foothold here that they could send their own work force here.”

 

“Nah, it really was just chance.  I’m more of what you’d call an everyman, anyway,” the man shrugged, plucking a few loose grains of rice off of his plate with practiced ease.  “I don’t like to stick myself to just one career path and hope it doesn’t fall through, so I tend to do a lot of smaller odd jobs instead.”

 

At the head of the table, Miya chuckled darkly.  “Ara, it would seem I’ve accidentally invited another layabout into my home.  I do hope that unlike certain parties who will go…  _unnamed_ , that you will be able to make your rent on time.”

 

Homura shivered slightly.  Miya wasn’t really angry, or else there would likely have been a lot more screaming, but that particular tone of hostility masked beneath a polite veneer was one she usually reserved for Seo whenever he came to score a free meal off of Miya’s generosity.  What the hell had Patrick Erilaz done to get her that vexed with him in less than a day?

 

Looking up, Homura was just in time to catch a glimpse of Patrick rolling his eyes.

 

“Ah yes, a layabout.  One who lays about, doing nothing.  We have dismissed these claims.  It might be more accurate to say that I have worked a lot of different jobs in the past, so I have the luxury of being able to pick and choose what I do for a living based on what I feel like doing, and the opportunities available.  For example, exam season for the local schools starts about two months from now, so even though I’d rather take a break from formal teaching right now there’s still going to be a fair amount of interest in a tutor who’s familiar with English and Japanese, so I can rent my time out doing that for the next few months.  I also make and restore metalware by commission, so by the time exams are over and there’s not as much demand for a tutor, I’ll hopefully have enough of a customer base from that to support myself and Medusa for a while.  If not, we can always find something else to do,” he explained, idly gesturing with a pair of chopsticks as he did so.

 

Homura couldn’t help but ask.  “You’re a teacher?  Of what?”

 

Patrick held a hand up and tilted it from side to side.  “Mainly English and English literature.  I’m no college professor, but I’ve taught a handful of secondary school classes in my time.”

 

Uzume hummed thoughtfully.  “You said something about metalware?  You do anything special?”

 

“All sorts, really.  I’m something of a self-taught metalworker and mechanic, so I’ve made pots, pans, cutlery, various display pieces, like I said, all sorts.”  Patrick shrugged.  “I’ll admit that personally I prefer working with swords, but that’s something of a niche market these days, and around here especially it’s a niche that is already very much spoken for,” he admitted.

 

Miya perked up almost imperceptibly.  “You are familiar with the art of forging swords, Erilaz-san?”

 

Patrick paused mid bite to meet Miya’s suddenly appraising look.  He gulped down a mouthful of tempura before answering.

 

“I’ve dabbled in swordplay before, and the eventual evolution of that was that I decided I wanted to be able to make and maintain my own swords if needed.”

 

Miya hummed thoughtfully as she seemed to look Patrick up and down once more.  “Japanese or European style?”

 

“European.  A little bit of non-specific fencing, I dipped into some more exotic and unique styles, but more and more I find myself going back to the German longsword as time’s gone by.”

 

Miya nodded as a faint smile crossed her face.  “Kendo has long been a hobby of mine.  I usually practice in the mornings before breakfast in the backyard, and I must admit I am interested in practicing with someone who knows a more exotic style.”  Only a hint of her earlier aggravation remained in her voice, just enough to make Homura suspect that he might want to catch a sight of this match if it did happen, out of morbid curiosity if nothing else.

 

Seemingly unaware of the doom that had settled over his head, Patrick nodded thankfully at the landlady.  “Thank you for the offer, and for the wonderful meal,” he said, holding up his rice bowl in a kind of toast before continuing, “I must say, the hospitality you’ve shown us has been miles better than what I experienced before coming to Tokyo.”

 

At that, Medusa made an odd sound, like she was trying to remain silent despite wanting to snort in amusement.  Patrick set his bowl down, reaching up with his free left hand to stroke her shoulder.  Homura felt an odd twist in his chest, noticeable through the sensation of warmth that was unusual even for him, as he watched Medusa close her eyes and smile faintly as she leaned ever so slightly into the motion.

 

Thankfully, Uzume provided a distraction from the odd moment.  “So, teacher, handyman, sword guy, sword maker, you got any other odd talents or stories to share?”

 

Patrick looked up at the cheery woman, seeming to consider the question as he tilted his head slightly, a sly smirk spreading across his face.

“Oh, plenty.  Some of them are even true.  Such as, for instance... that one time when I was a mechanic on an illegal underground race circuit.”

 

At that, Medusa seemed to choke on air, quickly snatching up a napkin to cough into, seeming to try to hide her face behind that and her hair as everyone else save Patrick blinked in bemused shock, the man himself smiling innocently.

 

“I’m sorry, did you say,” Homura finally choked out, trying to contain his shock enough to actually form words, “you worked for illegal street racers?”

 

Patrick blinked in feigned confusion, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.  “Did I say that?  That doesn’t sound like me.”

 

Uzume stared, her eyes wide and her voice flat.  “Bro, we just heard you say, ‘I used to be a mechanic for illegal races.’”

 

Patrick frowned.  “How odd.  I don’t think I’d just confess to being a criminal like that.  Does that seem like the sort of thing I’d do,  _to mati mou_?”  The last phrase was in a flowing language that Homura couldn’t quite recognise and addressed to Medusa, who was currently hunched over and visibly trying not to laugh.

 

“There, you see, that’s not the sort of thing I’d do at all.  My wife will back me up on this.”

 

Surprised, Homura took a closer look at their hands, and noted the tell-tale flash of a pair of rings, one on each of the pair.  Both were small, discreet affairs with light gold bands, with a line of jewels recessed into the top, but Homura couldn’t quite tell what they were at that distance.

 

At that, Medusa huffed, and firmly poked her mate in the side with a slim finger, drawing a theatrical wince and groan from him.  “You stop teasing them, husband mine.”

 

“So… you’re not some kind of illegal mechanic?”  Uzume sounded vaguely disappointed, but also amused.

 

Miya let out an exaggerated sigh of relief as she absent-mindedly hefted a ladle in a vaguely threatening manner. “Ah, that is good to hear.  I was worried that my late husband’s home was soon to be defiled by criminal, improper behaviors, and that would have made me quite upset.”

 

Patrick’s eyes twinkled with the delight of a man who is in on a joke no one else is as he raised his cup of tea up to his lips.  “Not in this lifetime, I’m afraid.”

 

***

 

Patrick and Medusa were sharing a room on the second floor, so Homura had to be discreet as he made his way up the stairs later that night.  From what Homura had gathered, they didn’t have that much luggage to unpack, so for the sake of Matsu’s privacy he would need to make sure that they didn’t notice him creeping into the hidden room on that floor.

 

As he carefully slid into the hidden room, Homura was instantly struck by the noise difference.  Miya clearly hadn’t skimped on the soundproofing for Matsu’s hideaway, since there was no hint whatsoever when one was standing in the hallway that just a few feet away, a wide array of fans were working feverishly to keep the computers within cool enough that they could keep up with their mistresses insane pace.

 

Counting Homura and Medusa, Matsu was the fourth sekirei in residence at Izumo Inn.  The only explanation Homura had gotten for her presence was that she had somehow gotten in trouble with MBI, so after Uzume helped her escape their custody the two had moved into Izumo.  While Uzume seemed unafraid of reprisal from MBI, at least to the extent that she would go outside but not near the MBI tower, Matsu had impressed upon Homura that she was trying to keep even rumors about her location from reaching the mega-corporation's many ears.

 

As Homura stepped further into the room, he squinted to make out Matsu’s silhouette against the backdrop of her many computer screens, all of them glaring brightly in the otherwise unlit room.

 

“Hello, Homu-tan,” the reclusive sekirei drawled as she continued to tap away at one of her multiple keyboards.  “Have you come to pick Matsu’s brain about the new housemates?”

 

“You do know it’s really creepy when you do something like that, right?”  Homura sighed as he settled onto a cushion next to the #2 sekirei.

 

“Oh, but what other reason would you have to come visit lonely little ol’ me?  You only ever come to me when there’s something you want to know, and you always say no when Matsu asks you to help her with her experiments… unless maybe today-”

 

Homura took one look at the way the light was glinting off of Matsu’s glasses like she was the main villain in an action series, and the disturbing grin that was gleaming almost as much as her glasses in the electric-blue light, and immediately picked himself up to scoot a full cushion’s length away from the shut-in.

 

Matsu pouted.  “Awwww…. Homu-tan, why are you always so mean to Matsu?”  For a woman with a figure that would give many girls and women alike a complex, Matsu was almost disturbingly good at putting on childlike airs.

 

“Because you’re an insatiable pervert with no respect for personal boundaries.”  Homura deadpanned.

 

Matsu sniffed indignantly.  “And yet, you’re the one who came to me to ask for all the dirty details on our new resident ashikabi, so who’s really the one with no respect for boundaries?”

 

“Still you.”

 

Matsu cried piteously as she flung the back of her hand against her forehead, fanning herself with her other hand as if she were a Victorian lady on the verge of fainting.  “And here I thought you were such a gentleman!”

 

Homura ignored the pang of… something… that came from hearing that, and crossed his arms over his chest.  “Any day you feel like being helpful, Matsu.  If you please.”

 

Matsu sighed, her long cheongsam-styled dress rustling as she sat upright once more.  “I suppose, since you asked so nicely.”  A few flicks of her fingers replaced the otherwise incomprehensible charts and tables of data on some of her screens with a variety of pictures and written reports, ranging from Medusa’s MBI mug shot and medical forms to security camera footage of Patrick making his way through the streets of Shin Tokyo.

 

“Besides,” and now Homura looked back towards Matsu to see that she had taken her glasses off and dropped her lecherous grin, “I have a few questions about what I could find that I wanted to run past you and see what your read on them was.”

 

At times like this, Homura was reminded that for all her perverted and spoiled mannerisms, Matsu was a single number like himself.  More than that, she had been a member of the very first Disciplinary Squad, and if half the stories Homura had heard were true, that meant she likely had a sizeable body count all of her own.  Just because her sekirei talent of machine interfacing and manipulation was more subtle than Mutsu’s geokinesis or Karasuba’s sword-play, didn’t mean she was any less dangerous.  Thus, for her to actually show signs of genuine wariness towards the subject of their conversation was both unexpected… and concerning.

 

“Patrick Erilaz first appeared on MBI’s radar a little less than two months ago, when a tracker program picked up on his hotel booking.”  Matsu flicked a few keys, bringing a copy of the hotel’s records to the foreground.  “He booked a single-bed room for one months time, which he formally extended to a two month stay after a couple of weeks.  During that time, he set up a bank account in his name, purchased a cell phone and a variety of general day-to-day goods and expenses.  Nothing he did during that time tripped any of MBI’s triggers for finding industrial spies or government agents, so surveillance was stopped, but his name was kept in the system.  He was flagged again by the system after he winged sekirei #21 in early October, and MBI’s routine background check found that he had funded his bank account by selling notable quantities of antiques and certain rare metals to various buyers throughout the city.”

 

“Notable quantities?”

 

“A kilogram of platinum to a jeweler here, a few antique coins or dishes there, a few slabs of processed cobalt and steel to a machine shop over there, with no one transaction large enough to raise suspicion, but all together?   People don’t just carry around a shopping lists worth of some of the most valuable minerals on Earth.”

 

“Did he maybe work for a mining company at some point?”

 

“And now we get to the part that has Matsu concerned.  I don’t know if that’s where he got all that stuff, because as far as both Matsu and MBI can tell, he did not exist before he showed up in the lobby of the Tokyo Super Hotel and checked into a room.”

 

That got Homura’s attention.  “Are you sure you didn’t miss anything?”

 

“MBI did their own investigation that didn’t turn anything up, and ever since I found their records a few hours ago I’ve been going over what they did to see if they just missed something.  Erilaz isn’t a common name, at all.  In fact, it doesn’t appear in any census that I’ve been able to check.”

 

“So he’s lying about his name.”  For some reason, Homura felt more disappointed than he did angry, or concerned.  He scratched that damn itch on his chest yet again, frowning as he did so.

 

“That seems likely.  The only references Matsu has found to the actual word ‘Erilaz’ have to do with ancient Europeans, apparently it means ‘wizard’ in some ancient Norse dialect.  The really concerning part is that, like Matsu mentioned, he doesn’t seem to have existed until two months ago.  Specifically, there are no records of anyone of his name or description passing through customs on their way into Japan.”  Matsu pointed a finger stiff with annoyance at a screen that was cycling through every social media service that had a foothold in Japan, and then some.  “There aren’t even any mentions of someone looking like him anywhere on social media until two months ago, either.”

 

“Not everyone uses social media, Matsu,” Homura pointed out absently, looking more closely at the list of some of the sales recorded to Patrick’s name.  A set of imitation Elizabethan plates made with period accurate techniques according to the buyer’s notes; several boxes of coconuts and American candy bars; he had even sold a set of authentic coats and jackets to a local theater that had needed costume pieces for their performance of  _As You Like It_.  “Where would you even get all of this- wait, does his reservation from the hotel mention how much luggage he had with him?”

 

“You’ve seen that beard of his, how likely do you think it is that no one would mention seeing someone with facial hair as odd as that in a tweet or status update?”

 

Homura couldn’t quite hold in his chuckle.  “It is rather striking.”

 

“As for your other question, the Super Hotel has automated kiosks that guests can use to check in, so no word on what he had with him when he checked in.”

 

“I didn’t see him taking in his luggage, but I feel like I would have if he had enough suitcases to carry around half of the things on this list,” Homura noted, tapping a display that was showing an invoice for three fleeces worth of untreated wool.

 

“MBI have been scratching their heads over that one as well.  Like I said, he winged #21 early in October, just a few hours after that odd encounter you had with 11, 12, and the Shadow, and after that they started using her MBI card for most of their day-to-day expenses.”  Seeing Homura leaning back on his heels with his arms crossed in thought, Matsu let a hint of her earlier teasing demeanour enter her voice once more.  “And before you ask, Homu-tan, yes, he and Medusa really are married.  The license fees are one of the things they used the MBI card for.”

 

Homura spluttered briefly in indignation.  “Wha- I wasn’t about to ask that!”

 

Matsu chuckled maliciously.  “Oh, so you’re trying to say that you aren’t interested in him at all?  After all, you’re the one who came to me, Matsu the super smart brain type, to learn more about him.”

 

Homura flushed, but glared defiantly back.  “Maybe so, but you’re the one who had already hacked MBI’s records to find out more about him.”

 

Matsu pouted.  “Aw, you’re no fun.”  Sobering up once more, she turned back to her screens, typing away once more.  “Besides, it was Miya who asked Matsu to look him up.”

 

“Miya wanted to know more about him?  Why?”

 

“Miya wanted to know if Mr Beard-face was telling the truth about being married to Medusa, so she asked Matsu to check MBI’s records on him.  That’s when Matsu found all the red flags and question marks in his file, so Matsu started to look a little more closely.  And that’s when you walked in.”

 

Homura shook his head.  Miya did a good job playing at being demure and innocent, but for people who actually knew her it wasn’t too difficult to see the holes in that persona of hers.

 

“Why did she want to know that?”

 

Matsu only giggled, before passing a hand-held tablet with a video already queued up on the screen to Homura.

 

“Just watch this.”

 

Accepting that he wasn’t going to get a straight answer from the perverted witch unless he played along, Homura tapped the play icon, and immediately a colored but slightly grainy video of Miya, Patrick, and Medusa sitting around a table in one of the side rooms of the ground floor appeared.  A spread of documents and contracts could be seen on the table, most of them sitting in a pile with signatures clearly visible on the dotted lines.  Judging by the sunlight that could be seen faintly filtering in through the window, the recording was from earlier that afternoon.

 

_“Of course, there are certain rules that I ask all tenants of Izumo Inn abide by,” the recorded version of Miya spoke, the very picture of politeness, with none of her restrained anger that he had seen earlier at dinner._

 

Homura frowned.  From the angle and quality of the picture, it looked like this had been taken by a camera installed in a corner where the walls met the roof.  Except Homura had never seen a camera like that in any of the rooms.  But if the cameras were just well hidden, then-

 

“Matsu, did you bug every single room in this place?”

 

“Don’t worry about it, just watch the recording.”

 

“Matsu, is there one of these cameras in my room as well?”

 

“Don’t ask stupid questions, you’re going to miss the good part!”  With that, Matsu leaned over to drag the video playback a few seconds back and turned up the volume while she was at it.

 

_“That’s understandable,” Patrick replied.  “What are they?”_

 

_“As I mentioned earlier, I do not accept credit from MBI cards for rent, or anything else.  The only other rules of note are that there is no violence in Izumo Inn, and lewd or obscene speech and behavior are also prohibited.”_

 

_Medusa had been nodding along until the second half of Miya’s sentence, at which point she started to blush instead.  Patrick paused in the middle of signing the last form in the pile, glanced up, and then finished writing his name as he spoke in a deliberately nonchalant voice._

 

_“So when you say that lewd behavior is prohibited, do you mind being more specific about what that means?”_

 

_Miya stared levelly at him, before smiling once more._

 

_“It means precisely what I said: lewd behavior is not allowed in my inn.  I expect all my guests to adhere to a minimum level of decency when out of their rooms, and I do not allow any illicit relations under my roof.”_

 

_Patrick set the pen down and pushed the forms to one side before steepling his hands in front of him.  “Any illicit relations?”_

 

_“I’m sure you can figure out for yourself what that means,” Miya calmly stated._

 

_Her blush fading but still visible if you knew what to look for, Medusa spoke up.  “When you say any behavior, does that include what we do in the privacy of our room?”_

 

_Miya raised an elegant eyebrow.  “Izumo Inn is a respectable establishment.  If you must indulge yourselves, you can find a variety of ‘love hotels,’” her voice thick with disdain on those two words before returning to her previous polite tone, “in the surrounding neighborhoods.”_

 

_Miya took a long sip of tea as Medusa glanced away and Patrick raised a skeptical eyebrow._

 

_Her voice now tinged with a definite note of warning, Miya continued after finishing her sip of tea.  “I will not have the inn my late husband left to me become a house of ill repute, you must understand.”_

 

_“Ah,” Medusa clenched her hands in her lap, respectfully nodding.  “I understand.”_

 

_Patrick nodded as well, his tone solemn as he spoke once more.  “I apologize if I was insensitive, or if I continue to be.  However, would I be wrong in guessing that you and your husband lived together in this house?”_

 

_Miya looked at him passively for a moment, and then she smiled._

 

Homura fought back the shiver that threatened to run up his spine in a pavlovian response to the sight of that smile.  Miya’s eyes were closed and her smile wouldn’t have looked out of place on a monk contentedly enjoying the fruits of their labors.  All the same though, even through the recorded video feed hours later she exuded a sense of menace that weighed down on Homura like a clammy blanket on a cold morning.

 

_“Ara, Mr Erilaz.  I do hope you aren’t going to try to compare your situation with the loving marriage my dear Takehito and I had.”  Nothing actually changed on screen, but all the same there was a sudden impression of **something**  hanging in the air behind Miya’s shoulder._

 

“I’m surprised he’s still alive after that,” Homura muttered.

 

_While Patrick and Medusa certainly seemed aware of the landlady’s rage, if the way Medusa straightened up and stared at Miya was any indication, they seemed mostly unfazed.  Patrick held up his hands in a calming gesture, speaking calmly but quickly._

 

_“I would not presume anything about your relationships; past, present, or future.  But on the other hand, by your reaction you admit that exceptions to your rule do exist in terms of what happens between a married couple behind closed doors.”_

 

_The shadows behind Miya seemed to grow deeper and darker, and now there was a visible distortion in the air just behind Miya, a dark ripple that seemed to have staring eyes and bared fangs when seen out of the corner of one’s eye._

 

_“Just so you know, Erilaz-san, Medusa-san, if you run out of this house and get married just to exploit that loophole, I will ensure that your stay in Izumo Inn is far shorter than you would like.”  Miya’s voice was still outwardly mild, refined, and calm, but in a way that only she could accomplish while still expressing her immense displeasure of the situation._

 

_In response, Patrick held up his left hand, displaying his ring finger and the wedding band thereon.  After a moment, Medusa held up her own left hand to show her own ring._

 

_“I assure you, madame landlady, we have already been married for quite some time,” the bespectacled woman mentioned dryly._

 

Homura tapped the pause button on the video, setting the tablet aside as he stared vacantly at one of Matsu’s monitors that was still displaying a rotating selection of surveillance photos of Patrick Erilaz’s face.  For a long moment, the loft room was mostly quiet as the two sekirei processed entirely different types and scales of information.  Finally, Homura spoke up once more.

 

“That man argued for conjugal rights to Miya’s face, with no shame or fear whatsoever.”

 

Matsu continued to type away at her keyboard, summoning and dismissing virtual sheafs of data with the ease of a conductor keeping time.  “Like Matsu said, Miya wanted me to find out if he and Medusa were actually married to see if he was just saying that to get around her rules, but then Matsu found so many other things to be worried about.”

 

Homura paused for another long moment before he finally asked another question.

 

“Do you think he’s a foreign agent or from an organized crime group?”

 

“If he were one of those, I don’t think he would have stayed in this city for so long.  He would have tried to skip town with Medusa in tow the moment she was winged to him.”

 

Matsu was not speaking hypothetically.  She had been a member of the first Disciplinary Squad, from before they were MBI’s pack of barely trained attack dogs.  20 years ago when the sekirei and their ship was first discovered, it had not been long before government agencies both domestic and foreign noticed and tried to take possession of the alien ship for themselves.  Matsu, Mutsu, Kazehana, Karasuba, and the #1, first among all sekirei, had been awoken and grown to maturity just in time to meet the attackers head on.  The resulting massacre had been the one and only time anyone had tried to seize the sekirei by force, but there had been a number of attempts over the years to use guile or stealth to do the same.  So far, each and every such attempt had been thwarted, but it remained an active fear in the minds of those sekirei old enough to remember, or aware enough to pick up on the whispers of the MBI employees.

 

“But he could be playing the long game, looking for a chance to slip MBI’s net,” Homura pointed out, clenching his fist to keep himself focused.  He quelled the urge to light up a smoke; it might have calmed his nerves, but he suspected Matsu might actually try to murder him if it seemed like he was endangering her electronics with any kind of smoke or fire.

 

“It’s possible.”  And if that was the case, then Patrick Erilaz potentially posed the greatest danger to the sekirei as a whole than any other person who was not named Hiroto Minaka.

 

With a quick intake of breath, Homura heaved himself up off the cushion he had been kneeling on, turning towards the door.  “I’ll keep an eye on him, as Kagari and as the Sekirei Guardian.  You let me know if he does anything concerning.”

 

Homura heard Matsu agreeing to do so from behind him, but his mind was elsewhere.  He briefly considered ducking out for a smoke or to go on patrol, but decided not to.  Tonight he would unwind in his room with a bit of reading and then get to sleep early for once.  After all, he had a show to catch tomorrow morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update brought to you by: Ryune. Please consider supporting me on Patreon, so that I can bring you more of the content that you like.
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> I've been looking forward to this chapter, since it's the first time you get to actually meet the jumper in person.  I've hinted a bit more at at least three of the previous jumps, although some of the hints were a lot more subtle than others, I'll admit.  I'm curious to see what you all actually think of how the story is going so far, and encourage you to comment on things that you found interesting, intriguing, or just entertaining.


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning, Homura was yawning as he stepped out onto the back porch, mug of steaming tea in hand.  He had to stop for a moment to properly take in the scene as Patrick and Miya prepared to face off on the back lawn.

 

Izumo Inn’s back lawn was surprisingly spacious for something that was located anywhere in the mega-city once known as Tokyo.  If you got rid of the tool shed pressed up against the back fence and the couple of trees by that same fence, you might have been able to fit a tennis court in the yard.  In the center of the yard, a few yards apart, Miya and Patrick were preparing for their spar.  Miya was wearing her usual outfit, with the addition of the sheathed sword she held easily in one hand and a pair of wooden outdoor sandals.  Patrick, on the other hand, had thrown on a pair of sneakers and switched to a short-sleeved shirt that easily displayed the lean muscles and tendons lining his forearms like steel cables.  Homura felt a flash of surprise at the realization that the man’s long sleeves and hand wrappings from the night before had been covering up a set of tattoos: long chains of black markings set within a coiling band that wound around his forearms just below the elbow to form a ring before winding and criss-crossing along the length of the forearm to end in a circle centered on the back of each hand. 

 

Homura wasn’t quite able to make out any more of the details before Patrick finished pulling on a pair of gloves made from a rough material with bulky padding over the backs of the fingers and hands.  He flexed his hands, wiggled his fingers in a wave pattern, and nodded in satisfaction.  With that, the American put one foot forward, hooking it underneath a length of wood resting on the ground just in front of him before launching it up with a quick, decisive motion.  Easily snatching the wooden practice sword out of the air, a few quick flicks of his wrist sent the tip of the sword spinning into a circle to Patrick’s left, then to his right, before coming to rest in front of Patrick’s torso, handle just above the level of his waist and the tip pointed up and towards Miya.

 

Homura couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the spectacle but he had to admit, there was something oddly thrilling about how fluidly the strange man could move, like the sense of fascination and professional admiration that comes from seeing a skilled juggler put on a show.  That said, Homura had been in enough fights with other sekirei to know that just being able to put on a good show was no real indicator of talent.  He pulled at the collar of his shirt, grimacing as he tried to quell the build-up of heat from his powers once again. 

 

“Good morning, Kagari-san.”  The quiet voice drew his attention to where Medusa was sitting on the edge of the porch, feet on the ground, a book and folded towel in her lap.

 

“Good morning, Medusa-san.  Do you mind if I sit here?” Homura asked, stepping up to stand next to her on the edge of the walkway.  At her answering shake, Homura settled himself down into a seated position, tea still in hand.  He yawned once more, taking a deep sip of his drink to try to wake himself up.

 

“A rough night?”  Medusa asked absently, eyes still locked on her book, save for whenever she glanced up towards where her ashikabi and landlady had both settled into ready positions, swords held ready in two handed stances.  While Miya held her still-sheathed katana directly in front of her body in a classic chūdan-no-kamae, Patrick held his straight sword up close to himself like a batter at the plate.

 

“I had a lot of odd dreams that I can’t remember, so I would say that’s a fair assessment.”  Patrick had started slowly circling Miya, the landlady’s feet gliding over the grass as she kept turning to face him.

 

“I see.”  With a sudden burst of movement, Patrick closed the distance between him and Miya, stepping forward with one foot into a deep lunge while swinging his sword down and forward in a quick jab.  Miya smoothly deflected the blow, pushing the oncoming blow to one side while stepping in the other direction and raising her bokken up above her head.  Without hesitating, Patrick pivoted on his forward foot while drawing his sword back to cover his own head.  Miya aborted her own retaliatory strike, and the two stepped back and began to circle each other once more.

 

Idly scratching his chest, Homura decided that there was no real point in beating around the bush.  “You’re number 21, are you not?”

 

Medusa turned her page as Patrick swung towards Miya once more and spoke up over the sound of wood clashing as the man made a series of alternating horizontal cuts towards the landlady, each of the swings blocked easily by slight movements of Miya’s own blade.

 

“Yes.  Which number are you?”

 

“Number six.”

 

That got a reaction out of Medusa, as she looked up from her book to face Homura head on.  This close, her eyes were clear to see even through the lenses of her glasses.  Homura couldn’t quite stop his own eyes from widening in surprise as he met her eyes.  The irises were a shimmering lilac, that much he had already known, but that was nothing compared to the fact that her pupils were square, not circular.

 

 _Unique eyes is a bit of an understatement,_   _Takami_ , Homura thought to himself.

 

Medusa studied him for a moment, seeming to be looking for something, before returning to her book with a noncommittal hum.  “I suppose it’s a good thing then that there is no violence in Izumo Inn,” she observed.

 

Homura slowly let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding as he turned back towards the ongoing spar.  He frowned as he took in the current state of the two combatants, tilting his head slightly, before making a dry remark.  “Well, no violence except for that.”

 

Medusa glanced up from her book for a moment, just long enough to take in how Patrick was backing up, his sword flickering from one side to the other and up and down to bat away Miya’s quick slashes, his forearms marked with a number of line-shaped bruises that were already turning red and purple.  “He’ll be alright.”

 

Homura boggled at that for a moment.  For all that he wasn’t sure if he should be rooting for his landlady or his fellow tenant, the woman sitting next to him seemed to be showing a distinct lack of care for the fact that her husband, her ashikabi, her destined one, was currently serving as stress relief for a ticked off widow.  “Shouldn’t you be more concerned for your ashikabi?”

 

Medusa turned over another page as Patrick brought the hilt of his sword down in a hammerblow onto the flat of Miya’s blade as it swung towards his ribs, knocking the curved length of wood down and away.  In the same instant, Patrick tensed his arms as he turned that downwards motion into the launching point for a blisteringly fast thrust towards Miya’s face, as the landlady hopped back, letting the point of her own sword be batted down and then back up behind her in a loop that turned the momentum from Patrick’s deflection into a lethal overhead chop.  A slight twist of his wrists aborted Patrick’s stab, instead placing the crossguard of his practice sword directly in the path of Miya’s attack.  With a sharp crack, the sheathed sword that Miya was using broke right through the thin wooden rod.  As Patrick turned his sword to horizontal and pushed down with it, hoping to trap Miya’s blade underneath it, he moved just a hair too slowly to keep Miya from shoving forward, drilling the wooden point right into Patrick’s chest just a hair below where his heart would be, the force of the impact driving an audible gust of breath out of the man.

 

Medusa turned another page, seemingly focused solely on her reading.

 

“He’s had worse.”

 

In the background, Patrick took one of his hands off the hilt for a moment to shake out the stinging from having his knuckles rapped by Miya’s sword.  She quickly moved to punish him for his lack of attention, causing Patrick to hop backwards into a pose that Homura vaguely remembered from those American movies with sword fighting pirates that seemed to come out every few years: one leg back, one leg forward, sword held pointing forward in just one hand with the other held up behind his back for balance.  For a moment the two stood still as Miya studied his posture with a raised eyebrow, before she leapt forward in a blistering fast thrust.  With a surprisingly quick motion, Patrick’s sword flickered as he spun it about in a circle that batted the thrust away to the side, before lunging forward himself in a riposte that caught Miya’s arm even as she stepped back, her deflection of Patrick’s sword just a hair too slowly. 

 

Miya’s eyes narrowed as she hopped backwards even as her sword batted Patrick’s own down and away, before changing tacks as she went on the offensive.  She hefted her sword high and chopped down in an overhead strike that was stopped dead as Patrick stepped in closer to her with his back foot, twisting his sword hand back and up while his other hand shot up to fasten onto the tip of his sword, holding the length of wood up above his head like it was a quarterstaff rather than a sword.  Miya’s strike was intercepted by Patrick’s block with the harsh clacking sound of wood that was being pushed to the limits of its structural integrity, before Patrick heaved the locked swords down and to the left with a growl that turned into a roar as he struck upwards with the pommel of his sword, causing Miya to duck gracefully beneath the strike as it neared her head.

Removing his off hand from the point of his sword once more, Patrick took up a two handed stance with his sword held up horizontally above his head before going on the attack once more with swooping, wide swings that went over and around Patrick’s head and down towards Miya’s own, forcing her to either sidestep rapidly or block the blows head on rather than try to exploit the obvious opening in his stance. 

 

As Patrick suddenly switched a feinted cut down towards the shoulders into an uppercut-swing aimed for the diaphragm, Miya swung her sword down all the faster, knocking Patrick’s wooden blade away and letting the impact bounce the point of her sheath up and straight into Patrick’s chest.

 

Homura continued watching the spectacle for a moment, before starting the conversation back up.

 

“You have a lot of faith in your Ashikabi.”

 

“He is my husband.  You’ll understand how it is once you get your own.”

 

Homura blushed.  “My own wife- er, ashikabi, that is.”

 

Medusa continued to read her book, but Homura would swear that out of the corner of his eye he saw her raise an eyebrow for a moment.  “If you say so.”

 

Homura coughed.  “Anyway, like I said, you put a lot of trust in him.  Is that just your attachment to him, or is he really that…”  Homura’s voice trailed off, as he realized he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to ask.  Trustworthy?  Earnest?  An upstanding moral citizen who definitely wasn’t plotting to ensnare the sekirei in bondage worse than what they were already trapped in?

 

Homura knew what love was, in an abstract sense.  He had read about it, heard Takami’s own opinions on the subject (she dismissed anything but parental love as overactive hormones meeting sentimentality), and had listened to enough married and unmarried women give inebriated rants on the subject to have a good idea of what it meant to love and to be loved.  The way Medusa acted towards Patrick, the way she easily moved to defend him from serious danger yet didn’t so much as flinch even as Miya was pummeling his forearms with swift strikes that were seeminglybbv too fast for his blade to keep up with, and how their conversations flowed and meshed together seamlessly, gave the impression of a relationship that was much older than just one month.  It just didn’t make sense to Homura.

 

What about Patrick Erilaz was worth loving so deeply?

 

Homura was brought out of his chain of thought by the realization that the yard had gone quiet.  Patrick had his practice sword in front of him, point embedded in the ground and his hands resting on the one remaining half of the crossguard, while Miya was loosely holding her own sword in front of her as well with both hands.  The two were standing still, only about a meter of distance between them, talking quietly.  Miya was still entirely unmarked save the odd crease on her otherwise pristine kimono where the few hits Patrick had landed had pressed into the fabric.  Meanwhile, grass stains marked several folds on Patrick’s pants and there were a few more bruises and abrasions on his arms than before.

 

Homura turned back towards Medusa to see that she was quietly studying him once more, her odd eyes slowly flicking across his face and body.  Slowly, her lips spread into a faint smile, before she turned back to her book.

 

“Patrick likes to make himself out to be bigger and better than he really is, but underneath all that he has more of a bleeding heart than even he’d like to admit,” Medusa said in a contemplative tone.  “He likes to pretend that he only cares about things that directly affect him, yet somehow or other, when things are going wrong for someone else he always seems to be stuck in the middle of it, trying to make things better.”  Tucking a silk ribbon in between her current pages, Medusa closed her book and held it loosely against herself.  “I would recommend you get to know him for yourself, though.”  With that, she smoothly stepped up and forward, meeting Patrick as he slowly walked back to the porch, sword leaning on one shoulder.  Miya stepped past the other purple-haired woman, nodding a greeting to her and to Homura as she stepped up onto the porch and disappeared inside to finish preparing breakfast.

 

“Hey there, beautiful.  How about a kiss and a hug for the wounded warrior on his triumphant return, eh?”  Patrick spread his arms out, his breath steaming in the cold November air as it escaped through his wide grin.  Homura glanced at his outstretched arms, noting how neither the cold nor the pain of the now dull red bruises seemed to have an effect on the impossible man.

 

Patrick’s grin quickly faded as Medusa softly bopped him on the forehead with her book.  “Maybe once you stop overacting.  And wash yourself.”

 

Patrick sighed as he rested the dented and dinged wooden sword back on his shoulder, but he was smiling as he did so.  “Remember back when you used to treat me with respect?  I miss those days.”

 

Medusa smiled as she draped the towel she had been holding across Patrick’s shoulders.  “No you don’t.”

 

Patrick tilted his head back and forth for a moment in consideration, and then spoke again.  “Yeah, you’re right.  Anyway,” Patrick seemed to brighten up as he and Medusa walked together to and up onto the porch, stopping for a moment on the way to kick off his shoes while he wiped his face with the towel.  “Good news is, I think the landlady no longer hates my guts.”

 

Medusa made a questioning hum, before suddenly stopping to turn and look back at Homura, who was staring out into the yard trying not to seem as though he were intruding.  “Are you not coming in for breakfast, Kagari?”

 

Homura shook his head as he reached into a pocket for a carton of cigarettes, grabbing one in between his teeth and sliding it out of the box.  “It’ll be a few minutes before breakfast is ready, I’ll be back in by then,” he said, cupping his hands around the cigarette to hide the fact that he had no lighter or match to explain it’s sudden ignition.  Medusa may have known he was a sekirei, but if she hadn’t already told Patrick he’d rather keep that fact quiet, and besides it was better if as few people as possible could connect Kagari the host to Homura the fire-wielding Sekirei Guardian.

 

“See you then, man.”  Homura restrained an odd flinch that ran through him at that, focusing on his thoughts as he mulled over what he had seen and heard as the bearded man resumed his conversation with his wife.  “That said, ‘no longer hates me’ is something of a relative term.  She wants to have another little practice match in a couple days, and strongly hinted that it may come sooner based on…”

 

Homura listened as the couple’s footsteps and conversation grew quieter as they closed the door behind them, breathing out the stinging smoke, still deep in thought.  He rubbed at the strange tingling feeling in his chest with a grimace.

 

He would still be keeping an eye on Patrick Erilaz when he wasn’t busy with work or patrols, but he had a gut feeling that he no longer needed to be concerned about Patrick meaning harm to the other sekirei.  Medusa seemed to be truly close to him, and based on how Miya had no longer looked like she was one heartbeat away from unleashing the Hannya by the end of their practice bout she had also come to accept, if not forgive, the man.

 

He would still be watching Patrick closely, however.  After all, Homura was still curious about the enigmatic man from the West.  Especially, Homura realized with a sudden chill that drowned out the feverish sensation that was a near constant companion for him these days, since for all that he had been acting as though he was exhausted and battered, he hadn't actually broken a sweat at any point.

 

_This update brought to you by: Ryune. Please consider supporting me on Patreon, so that I can bring you more of the content that you like._


	6. Chapter 6

After the excitement that surrounded their first twenty-four hours in Izumo Inn, Patrick and Medusa slotted themselves into the daily routine of the household with almost disappointing ease.  In the mornings, Patrick and Medusa would exercise, either by going for a short jog around the neighborhood or doing various stretches and calisthenics in the backyard.  They always finished at about the same time that Miya finished preparing the morning’s food, by which point Uzume would be awake enough to join the rest for breakfast.  If he had been awake to have breakfast with the rest, Homura would then go back to his room and collapse into a nap that usually lasted most of the morning.  He usually set an alarm so that he could run patrols during the day on a random schedule, so that he could catch threats during the day without becoming too predictable.

 

In the meantime, Miya attended to the many chores needed to keep the inn running, while Uzume would duck in and out of the inn on her own schedule throughout the day, occasionally running errands on Miya’s behalf, at other times staying in her room to piece together various costumes.  Homura didn’t pry too much into her business, but given that he had seen her coming and going from a particular hospital more than once, and that he knew Uzume was already winged from the visible sekirei mark on the back of her neck, he could draw his own conclusions.

 

Patrick and Medusa would also periodically leave the hotel during the day, Patrick to work whatever odd job he had that particular day, and Medusa to accompany him.  This changed somewhat after the first week, when Medusa came back home one evening wearing the uniform jacket from a ramen shop that did delivery over her usual turtleneck sweater, and the news that she now had a part time job of her own.   After that, Patrick started staying at the Inn throughout the day more often, during which time he could be found either in his room taking notes on the contents of various books or working on various projects in the tool shed.  When Homura had asked about why the other man had what amounted to unrestricted access to the toolshed, Uzume had gleefully informed him that after Miya found Patrick sitting on the back porch using a soldering iron to fix a circuit board she had immediately exiled any future projects of his to the shed.

 

In the evenings the household would all gather together in the dining room for dinner and light conversation.  Homura missed these nightly gatherings due to his job as often as not, but for the evenings he was there he found Patrick and Medusa contributed well to the various conversations that would occur over dinner.  The residents of Izumo Inn quickly learned that while the American man would never talk about where specifically he came from, he had no small number of stories about places he had been or strange events he had been involved in that he would use to deflect the original question about where he was from.  Uzume in particular was fond of verbally prodding the man to relate some anecdote from his past, trying to lure out the scandalous details of the life of crime that Patrick would teasingly deny having led one night, only to offhandedly mention the practical difficulties of hiding smuggled goods from random inspections the very next evening.

 

Aloof as he was, Homura found himself getting drawn into the occasional literary discussion between himself and Medusa.  Occasionally, Patrick and Miya would talk about various aspects of swordsmanship or other subjects.  Such discussions mainly consisted of light-hearted arguments about the merits of their preferred styles over the other's, where Patrick would despair at the lack of options that a katana offered while Miya disparaged the idea of using a sword's hilt as a primary weapon.  After realizing that Patrick would never turn down her requests for a practice spar no matter how many bruises she left on him by the end, Miya had warmed up somewhat towards the man.  While it’s hard to guess how much of it was due to her respecting his resilience as opposed to her having an easy way to vent her frustrations against him, Miya had gradually become less coldly hostile towards him.  Indeed, after almost a month of Patrick and Medusa staying in Izumo, with no sign that their best behavior was just an act, Miya seemed to have ruled Patrick out as a threat to the reputation of her home.  She still watched the two for any signs of overt intimacy outside of their room, but seemed to have decided that as long as what happened in Patrick and Medusa’s room stayed in their room, that she would not punish them for it.

 

By mutual unspoken agreement, the subject of the Sekirei Plan went unmentioned by anyone.

 

After work Homura would patrol the city, leaving the others to their own devices for most of the night.  On a couple evenings when he was able to make it back home early for whatever reason, Homura would often find Patrick and Medusa sprawled out together on either the back porch or a cushion in the common room, usually reading together or just talking quietly.

 

Throughout all this, Matsu stayed hidden in her room.  On the couple of occasions Homura found a reason to visit her, she would mostly complain about how Homura had managed to find and destroy the hidden camera in his room.  This was even more distressing to her, or so it seemed, because the camera hidden in the room Patrick and Medusa slept in had stopped working only a couple days after the two moved in.  Homura found the coincidence suspicious, especially considering that the couple had apparently forgone any consummation of their relationship until after the camera had stopped working.  Homura knew this because Matsu had complained at length about how frustrating it was that there was still one working microphone in that room but she had how she had not had a chance to repair her visual surveillance network, and therefore had no proper visuals to go with the recordings.

 

Homura had tried his best to quietly slip out of the room while Matsu was distracted by her dramatic monologue about how unfair it all was.

 

Of course, Homura had his own problems to deal with.  While the Shadow Hikari and Hibiki had encountered hadn’t appeared again, between those two and the handful of other sekirei who had seen something they couldn’t quite identify crossing the city skyline there were plenty of rumors circulating both online and in person about mysterious mind-controlling sekirei who stole memories and ate souls.

 

On a more immediately serious note, the increase in paranoia among the sekirei, combined with the fact that there were just more of them in the city now was leading to a lot more work for the Sekirei Guardian.  Hikari and Hibiki had returned to ambushing lone unwinged sekirei once more, albeit a lot more cautiously, and there were a few rumors of a sekirei clad in veils doing something similar.  On top of that, two major powers had emerged in the landscape of Shin Tokyo.  In the east of the city, a coalition of sekirei all answering to a man called Higa Izumi dominated the region. To the south was the territory of another ashikabi, Hayato Mikogami, who had lucked out by winging one of the most powerful eligible sekirei early on and had continued trying to aggressively ‘expand his collection’ ever since.  Homura was already suffering from the fact that the south and east were where he was needed the most, yet also where he himself was in the most danger.  Homura had started running into sekirei who were apparently being bribed or just directly ordered by Higa to fight him, while Mikogami had certainly expressed interest in adding ‘the rare flame guardian’ to his flock, an interest that Homura had no intention of returning.  Mikogami was a child who treated the Sekirei Plan like it was the most exclusive video game imaginable and on top of that he was greedy and cruel in a way only the young and spoiled can be.

 

Also, he was a guy.

 

If Homura absolutely had to pick a man to be his ashikabi, then it would have to be one who respected Homura as a person, and who had a functioning moral compass.

 

Then, of course, there were the dreams.

 

***

 

It was almost three in the morning when Homura stumbled out of his room in a what could only be called a hot sweat.  It would have been a cold sweat, except the temperature of his skin was high enough to evaporate the water as quickly as his pores could produce it, leaving him scrabbling to keep his clothes from igniting.  Bare feet padding across the floor, he made his way into the kitchen, navigating to the sink on memory and instinct alone.

 

He let out a deep, relieved sigh when he managed to get his head under the faucet and turned the lever to the coldest it could go.  There was a slight hissing at first, before the water won out over Homura’s unstable body and he slowly started to return to something approaching a normal body temperature.  He let the water run for a full minute, before reluctantly turning it off and standing up straight.  As he swept his hair out of his eyes, he caught sight of his dim reflection in the window just above the sink.  Out of his suit and jacket, with his short hair plastered to his face and his flushed lips hanging slightly open he looked a touch more effeminate than usual.  If had been looking at someone else, at a girl who he didn’t know, he might even have said that she looked almost pretty.

 

He growled and turned away from the glass, stomping back towards his room, when suddenly he heard it.  A soft but deep voice, quietly singing lyrics to a lilting tune Homura could neither understand nor recognize.  All the same, something about the voice and the melody made Homura’s heart beat just a bit faster for a moment.

 

“ _-stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade...”_

 

Stepping more quietly, Homura moved down the hall to the door to the back porch, slowly and carefully pushing it open.  Through the crack, he saw Patrick sitting there on the porch, back leaning against one of the support columns, quietly singing (in English, Homura assumed) as he stroked the feathers of the large black bird that was sitting perched in his lap, while his other hand sketched out the details of a circular design on a pad of drawing paper next to him.  Laying open in his lap just in front of the crow was an old fashioned book, of the sort that is bound in thick leather, with coarse heavy pages turned pale beige from age.

 

“ _...and he carries the reminders, of ev’ry glove that laid him down or cut him...”_

 

Homura reached towards the sliding door, hesitated, then made himself reach the rest of the way towards the door handle and slide it open.  Patrick glanced up from his work with a curious look, then focused on pampering the bird once more while his other hand finished shading in the border of a particularly thick line in his drawing.  Homura settled himself down on the porch, one leg dangling off the edge as he leaned against his own column to face the other man.  Although, perhaps it was more accurate to say that he was facing the bird, as the near foot-long avian seemed to be paying more attention to him than the man it was sitting on.

 

_“Till he cried out, in his anger and his shame, I am leaving I am leaving but the fighter still remains...”_

 

Patrick stopped singing as he continued to sketch, humming the haunting melody for another few measures.  Homura took the opportunity to take a closer look at him.  Patrick was wearing a simple loose shirt and pants, clearly meant for use as pajamas, with a goldenrod scarf and thick wool socks as the only concessions he made towards the chill that had settled over Shin Tokyo midway through November and refused to leave.  Surprisingly, he had even abandoned the gloves and hand wrappings that seemed practically grafted to his skin.  Combined with his usual long-sleeved shirts, it meant that relatively few people outside of Izumo Inn knew that he had extensive tattoos marching up his forearms, a habit that Patrick had once admitted was a response to the association of tattoos in Japanese culture with criminal activity.  Tonight however, his hands and lower arms were bare save for a pair of matching silver bracelets, revealing the circles of banded angular runes on the backs of his hands and forearms.  In the center of the circles on his hands, however, there were two entirely different pictures.  On Patrick’s right hand, there were solid red marks forming a glyph like a serpent with batlike wings, with more eyes in each wing.  On his left hand, the circle contained a star-shaped figure made of deep red lines interwoven with each other like a celtic knot.

 

Homura wondered for a moment if there was some special meaning to the shapes and letters there.  Whatever it was, it had to be important to Patrick, if he was willing to have them etched so clearly and permanently into his skin.  He made a mental note to ask Matsu to research any special meanings that those symbols might have, and whether or not they were linked to any sort of organization that they should be wary of.

As the sounds of music slowly faded from the night the crow squawked in indignation, wings flapping slightly as it stood up before turning to fasten a surprisingly emotive glare at Homura.  Homura sat still, looking out over the yard as he worked to steady his powers enough that he stayed warm in the chilled air without smoke rising from himself or anything he was touching.  His power may be a curse that was slowly killing him, but at least there were some fringe benefits to being a walking fire hazard.

 

After a moment passed with no further music, Homura blinked in confusion, turning back towards his neighbor.  “Was that the end of the song?”

 

“Yeah,” Patrick admitted with a dry voice.  “Didn’t want to disturb you any more than I already have, but when you’re only a couple lines from the end of the song it just doesn’t make sense to call it quits there, y’know?”  In his lap, the crow squawked once more, before a quick flurry of its wings brought it up onto one of Patrick’s shoulders.

 

Frowning, Homura looked away, instinctively drawing the open collar of his sleep shirt closed.  “I suppose.  I don’t mind it, it’s just you never struck me as the singing sort.”

 

The crow started rhythmically croaking, and Patrick rolled his eyes as he set down his pen to reach into a small cloth bag by his side to draw out a seed that he forcefully pushed towards the birds face.  With a triumphant croak, the bird seized the seed in its beak, opening and closing its beak to get a better grip on the morsel.

 

“Everybody’s got their own song, I think.  Something that speaks to you, that you keep finding yourself listening to or just humming it.  Not so much something that gets stuck in your head, but just something you keep hearing year after year, if that makes sense,” Patrick sighed, slouching down a bit more as he turned to gaze up at what stars could be seen, closing the tome on his lap as he did so.

 

Homura considered his possible reply for a moment.  “No, I can’t say I’ve ever experienced that.  Maybe I just haven’t heard the right song yet.”

 

Patrick looked at Homura out of the corner of his eye.  “Maybe.  Or maybe I’m just wrong.  These are the questions that keep me up night, it seems.”  He shrugged, reaching over to a laquered wooden box next to him and flipping the lid open with a quick motion.  He casually dropped the book from his lap into the box before closing the lid once more.

 

The crow, seemingly bored with the conversation and tired of trying to show off its prize, gulped down the seed it held before hopping down to the floor near where Patrick was sitting, sauntering over to the bag of seed that was still lying open.  With a quick scoop, Patrick picked up the bag and drew a pinch of seeds from it that he then scattered over the porch away from bis drawing with a quick flick of his fingers.

 

The crow looked at the scattered seeds, then back at where Patrick was already tying the mouth of the bag closed, then back at the seeds.  It turned to Patrick one last time and made an ugly croaking noise at him before hopping after the scattered seeds.

 

Homura looked on with a bemused expression, his earlier discomfort not forgotten, but buried for the moment.  “That bird is disturbingly self aware,” he muttered.

 

Patrick smiled slightly, crossing his arms over his chest.  “Have you ever heard that fable about the thirsty crow and the jug of water?  Apparently there’s a good chance it was based on something that Aesop actually saw a crow doing one day.”

 

“Huh.” Homura tried to wipe the exhaustion of his face with a hand, but only succeeded in reminding himself of how smooth his skin was compared to Patrick.  With his hair more tousled than usual from sleep and his beard left free rather than braided or clamped into it’s usual style, Patrick looked more wild than usual.  Although granted, Homura couldn’t find it in himself to feel jealous: even if he could have grown it, he just couldn’t see himself with any kind of facial hair.  It certainly looked good on Patrick, but Homura was content enough with his smooth, hairless skin.

 

If nothing else, it was one less thing that he had to worry about setting on fire.

 

“I didn’t realize you had a pet bird,” Homura probed, trying to push away his previous line of thought.  “How’d you get Miya to let you keep it here?”

 

“Simple, Fetch doesn’t actually live here with me.”  Patrick leaned his head back and closed his eyes.  “He just shows up every once in a while to mooch treats off of me, and tell me some of the world’s tidings.”

 

“The world’s tidings?”

 

A lopsided smile appeared on Patrick’s face.  “Well, he’s only one bird, and he’s certainly no Huninn or Muninn.  He tries his best though.”

 

Slowed by sleep deprivation as he was, it took a moment for Homura to place the reference.  “Thought and Memory?”  He asked, half incredulously, half looking for clarification.  “I remember reading once that there was an ancient European god who had two ravens called that.”

 

“Yeah, but I don’t have enough of an ego to buy two entire ravens just to call them that, though, even as a joke,” Patrick defended himself.

 

A long moment passed before Patrick spoke once more.

 

“Can’t sleep, Kagari?”

 

Homura pulled his knee up to his chest and rested his forehead on his knee.  “Bad dreams.  You?”

 

“I’ve always been a bit of a night owl.  There’s also the fact that Fetch showed up and demanded food,” the crow-pecked man explained as he nodded his head towards where the crow was tapping at a particularly hard seed, trying to break it open.  Patrick sighed, letting his eyes drift open as he stared up at the walkways overhang.  “I may not be any kind of licensed dream doctor, but I’ve been around long enough to know that a lot of problems become easier to solve if you just talk about them.  So how’s about this: I’ll tell you about some of the things keeping me up if you’ll tell me about yours.”

 

Homura picked his head up and studied Patrick for a moment.  On the one hand, he was reluctant to open himself up to someone who was still very much a stranger, the month they’d lived under the same roof notwithstanding.  On the other, the man had a talent for saying a lot without telling much about himself, which was why Homura still didn’t really feel that he could say that he knew the other man.  At the moment, however, Patrick seemed to be as open as he ever got.

 

Eventually, Homura’s curiosity got the better of his reluctance to speak.

 

“I’ve been having the same dream for a while now.  In the dream, there are mirrors all around me.  I can see myself in them, but the more I look at them, at all the other ‘me’s,’ the more something feels wrong about them.”  Homura’s breathing became a bit more ragged as he dove back into the memory.  Some of the reflections had been wearing everyday casual wear, others wore the suit he usually wore to work, others the coat and mask of the Sekirei Guardian.  Yet no matter how he looked at the mirror images, no matter that they all wore the same clothing that he did, and was in at that very moment, there was something about them that made Homura’s guts twist with distaste and discomfort.  “I can’t put my finger on what was so wrong about them.  It wasn’t that the reflections were wrong, they all looked like me, they all were me, wearing the same clothes I do, it wasn’t even that they were those bent mirrors that change your reflection.  They were just… something wasn’t right.”

 

Homura glanced back up at Patrick for a moment, looking for some reaction from him, and saw only calm and placid curiosity on his face.  Emboldened, he continued to speak. 

 

“Then the mirrors… all started to break.  And I was standing in a pile of broken glass, except that feeling of wrongness wasn’t in the mirrors anymore.”  Homura omitted the fact that his dreaming self had been the one to break all the mirrors.  “Now I was… well, there was still something that didn’t feel right but I felt it when I looked down at my own body and then all of a sudden I… I woke up.”  Homura also omitted the fact that he felt his powers activate in the dream, instinctively trying to destroy what he saw as wrong, and what actually woke him up was the sudden sensation of burning as he almost set himself and his bed on fire while he slept.

 

“Huh,” Patrick grunted, before drawling a question in a hoarser and deeper tone than he usually had.  “Is having a pathological hatred of mirrors a new development for you?”

 

Homura choked out a bitter laugh, and replied before he realized what he was saying.  “I don’t always like what they show me.”  He drummed his fingers pensively, trying to figure out how to articulate his feelings without mentioning some things that he still didn’t feel comfortable sharing.  “I don’t know how much you know about the host industry, but appearances are pretty important there.  It’s important to be able to make small talk, listen well, and otherwise entertain, but at the end of the day what matters above everything else is that if a host is not presentable, they’re not going to get any clients.  I don’t mind that, in fact I’ve found that there’s a certain satisfaction in looking good, you know?”  At Patrick’s nod of agreement, Homura continued.  “I won’t deny that to me looking good is a point of pride, but sometimes I can’t help but feel like in trying to do so, that I’m being made to conform to an idea that isn’t me.”  He frowned.  “I don’t really know how to explain it.  I suppose it’s that… when I’m getting suited up for work, I look good, if I do say so myself.”

 

“You do fill out a suit pretty well, so you’ve got my agreement on that for what it’s worth,” Patrick observed, holding up one hand as if toasting with an invisible cup.

 

Homura blushed and looked away.  “Ah- th-thanks.”  He cleared his throat.  “But when I’m suited up for my job, it’s not so much that I look good, rather it’s more that I’ve become this living ideal of Kagari the host, and it’s the idea of Kagari who looks good instead of me.”  Shaking his head, he finally continued.  “I’m sorry, I’m not making very much sense.”

 

“No, no it makes sense.”  Patrick adjusted how he was sitting, grunting as he folded his legs underneath himself in a lotus position.  “What I’m getting from this is that you don’t quite feel comfortable in the mold that you’re expected to fit into, and you need some way to express yourself.”

 

Homura raised an eyebrow.  “I need to express myself?  I thought you said you weren’t a psychiatrist.  Or is that another one of those odd jobs you did just long enough to get some entertaining anecdotes about?”

 

“No, even after all these years I don’t think my people skills are really what I would need to be an actual psychologist.”  Patrick winced slightly as he stretched out his arms above his head, the dull cracking and popping of cartilage settling emitting from his back as he did so.  Leaning back against the pillar once more, be continued softly.  “But some things are universal, and you can’t help but pick them up over time.  For example, it’s always seemed to me that a lot of problems can be solved by getting some kind of hobby that has to do with the artistic side of things.  For some people it feels good to indulge in some creativity, for some people it just helps to calm down by just focusing on the act of painting or what-have-you, and then there’s just the simple fact that it can be an outlet and sometimes that alone can help.”

 

“Is that what you’re doing,” Homura asked, gesturing towards the incomplete sketch that was still sitting next to the other man, “making art to get over what’s keeping you up?”

 

Patrick snorted, picking up the drawing pad and holding it in front of him, clearly studying its contents.  “Sort of.  I suppose this is halfway between art for the hell of it and me just being a workaholic.  What I’m working on here is a design for something I need to get working, and as for why I’m doing it now?”  He shrugged as he placed a sheet of tissue-like paper over the drawing, before flipping the cover of the drawing pad shut over it.  “Fetch needed attention and I can multitask, but there’s a few other reasons.  I’ve found that there are some things that are just easier to draw in the moonlight,” he glanced up at the sky, where the lights from one of the busiest cities in the world met clouds and smog to form a faintly glowing aura that covered up all the stars.  “Or, well, as close as you can get to moon and starlight.”

 

Setting a hand down on the wooden floor, Patrick let Fetch the crow hop up to perch on his fingers, holding the bird in front of himself as he inspected its eyes.  Quietly, as though trying not to disturb the bird, he continued.

 

“I suppose you’re not the only one having nightmares either, though.  Nights like this, I can’t help going over old memories, and eventually that leads my mind back to certain dreams and nightmares.”

 

This time when he spoke once more his voice and gaze were distant, his syllables harsh with an accent that Homura couldn’t quite place.

 

“I keep dreaming about a city filled to the brim with blood and beasts.  Around every corner, a slavering maw, and behind every door another monster locked away, and the cobblestones were blanketed with straits of red.  You couldn’t walk through the streets without getting so covered in the red mud that you couldn’t tell which was hunter and which was beast, and who started as which.”

 

Homura couldn’t help but shiver at the man’s words.  Carefully, he spoke up once again.

 

“You almost sound like you’re talking about a memory, not just a dream.”

 

Patrick seemed to start as he looked up from his bird once more, staring directly into Homura’s eyes.  Homura fought to swallow with a suddenly dry mouth as his pulse pounded in his ears loudly enough to drown out any response the other man might have given.  Homura felt his own eyes widen slightly as they met the tawny green gaze head on, the sudden attention from the other man disconcerting.

 

Then Patrick blinked, and the moment was over.  Homura found himself looking back down towards the porch as he breathed rapidly, sweat breaking out across his body once more, as though he had just finished sprinting across the city skyline.

 

“Did I forget to mention?  I once worked a gig as an exterminator in a city with a lot of very big, very furry problems.”  And there was the usual Patrick, who said outrageous things in an infuriatingly offhand and serious manner, leaving it impossible to tell what was deadpan sarcasm and what was the truth.

 

“An exterminator.  You.  I’ve seen you catch spiders and move them out of doors with your bare hands instead of just killing them, somehow I just can’t see you killing small animals for a living,” Homura deadpanned.

 

Patrick barked out a short laugh as a rueful smile crossed his face.  “Aye, but it’s a different story altogether when it’s something that’s big and scary.  And let me tell you there was nothing small about the beasts in that city.  The rats were the size of alligators, I tell you.  Alligators!”

 

Homura rolled his eyes as he got up to his feet once more.  The moment was nice while it lasted, but Patrick was clearly past his moment of overly candidness, and Homura could respect that.  After all, he’d only told about half the story about his own dreams, so he couldn’t blame the other man for being selective about what he revealed or not.  “Good night, Erilaz-san.”

 

“G’night, Kagari.”

 

As Homura walked back to his room, he stopped as he passed by the ground floor bathroom and ducked in on an impulse.  He reached for the lightswitch, but halfway there his hand stilled, and then dropped back down to his side.  Raising his other hand, he called a fire the size of a lightbulb into being just above his palm.  Homura breathed in deeply, feeling the flame tug at his control, raring at the reigns as it sought to consume everything.  He breathed out, staring into his reflection in the mirror above the sink.  The flickering firelight shone over half of his face, leaving the other half in the shadows, yet no matter how closely Homura looked…

 

Homura scowled and closed his hand, extinguishing the flames.  He continued back towards his room, trying not to think about how, when he had looked into that mirror…

 

...he still had that feeling of something being  _wrong_  that had so tormented him in his dream, even after breaking all of the mirrors.

 

_This update brought to you by: Ryune. Please consider supporting me on Patreon, so that I can bring you more of the content that you like.  Special thanks go to HorizontheTransient, for fact-checking my depiction of the thought process of a trans-woman._


	7. Chapter 7

December rolled around, as it does every year, and thus Christmas decorations started to appear everywhere. For the most part, the only real notice Homura took of the season was the change in conversation topics at work, and the fact that he now needed to step carefully on certain rooftops due to the strings of Christmas lights hanging over the edges. That was, until one day when he was heading to the dining room for dinner when Uzume went running past him and back up the stairs to her room. Homura blinked, looked back towards where she had come from, then shrugged and continued on.

When he walked into the dining room, he saw that Patrick had apparently done his part to single handedly bring Christmas to the Izumo Inn. Currently, the American man was wrapping strings of beads around a small Christmas tree while humming a carol. He was also wearing a very fuzzy Santa hat, and had apparently changed out the plain wooden beads in his beard for ones that had red and green stripes.

Homura just stared at the scene for a long moment before shaking his head and sitting down at the table, across from a resigned looking Medusa.

“He seems to be very into the holiday spirit,” he mentioned in an undertone to the bespectacled woman.

Medusa sighed, smiling slightly. “Just wait until March. This is nothing compared to what happens then.”

Homura considered that statement for a moment, before suddenly remembering what was special about March. “Isn’t that when that European holiday that has the same name as him happens?”

Medusa nodded slowly, picking up her cup of tea. “Oh, yes.” She took a slow sip.

Homura sighed as he rested his head in one hand. “I shudder to think of how excited he must get about- wait.” He frowned as he realized something odd about what Medusa had said. Turning to face her more fully, he asked: “Wait, how do you know that? I thought you’ve only known him for the past few months.”

Staring straight back at him, Medusa blushed slightly as her eyes flickered to her husband for a brief second. “Ah, yes. That is true.”

Homura was interrupted from whatever he might have said next by the entrance of Miya with that night’s dinner. As the landlady set down the tray, she turned to look at where Patrick was putting the finishing touch on the tree: a shining metal star set right on top. 

Standing up straight, Miya smiled and tilted her head inquisitively. “Ah, Erilaz-san, it’s good to see that you are enjoying your time here in Izumo Inn, but don’t you think you should have asked before you started to decorate my home?” Homura shuddered as a large purple mask materialized in the air just behind Miya, the sheer sense of menace pouring off the fanged and horned construct an almost physical force.

Patrick grimaced at the scowling hannya mask as it glared at him, even as Miya continued to smile. “The tree is the only thing I was planning on adding. I didn’t think you’d be enough of a Scrooge to veto just one tree that’s waist-high to a toddler.”

“It’s a little taller than that, I think,” Homura muttered as the sign of Miya’s displeasure slowly faded away. The tree in question was about two feet tall, closer to three if you counted the deep terracotta pot it was held in. That said, Homura did have to admit that the geometric white and blue patterns that someone had added to the sides of the pot went well against the silver and red beads strung about the branches of the tree.

Miya giggled quietly as she knelt down at the table. “Just as long as you remember whose house this is,” she said, her smile completely unchanged. Then she frowned slightly as she noticed the empty setting at the table. “Will Uzume not be joining us for dinner tonight?”

“I passed her in the hallways on my way here, she was running back to her room it looked like,” Homura mentioned.

Medusa hummed thoughtfully. “She was here just before that. She said she needed to get something from her room.”

“Must’ve been important if it was worth missing out on Miya’s cooking,” Patrick noted as he ladled out some strips of cooked beef for himself. 

Miya chuckled. “Flattery will only get you so far, Erilaz-san.”

At that moment, the sound of feet padding over the floor drew everyone’s attention back to the door to the hallway. A moment later, Uzume slid into sight, arms and grin both spread wide.

“Ta da! Whaddya think?”

In the couple of minutes she had been back in her room, Uzume had apparently changed from her usual t-shirt and shorts into a red mini-skirt trimmed with green, although arguably the garment was more akin to a tube of fabric that went from just above the middle of her thighs to her chest, straining all the way to contain the bodacious woman's curves. Accompanying the skirt were a pointy red hat and a pair of pointy-toed green shoes.

Homura choked out a short laugh, and from the sounds coming from Medusa and Patrick it sounded as though he wasn’t the only one seeing the humor in the situation.

Miya shook her head, one hand going up to rest lightly against her temple. She sighed. “It’s nice to see how enthusiastic you young folk are about the holiday season, but perhaps it would be more sensible to cover yourself up just a bit more? It is cold outside, after all.”

To her credit, Uzume blushed a little as she glanced down at the wide expanses of skin that her top left exposed. “Yeah, I wasn’t going to wear this around the house, but since some of us are dressing up for the season tonight I figured this was a good time to check the fit before I showed it to Chiho,” she said, sheepishly rubbing the back of her neck.

“Chiho?” The question was out of Homura’s mouth before he could stop himself, and he saw Uzume flinch.

Uzume smiled sadly, but there was a gleam of fondness in her eyes as she stared into the middle distance. “Yeah, Chiho. She’s my… I wanted to be able to do something nice for her, y’know? I get the feeling she doesn’t usually have a lot to look forward to on holidays so… yeah,” she trailed off into a mumble, looking down and to the side.

Homura remembered how he had seen Uzume spending a lot of time around a specific hospital, and frowned in sympathy. He looked up to see Miya and Medusa wearing similar expressions of apologetic sympathy, but Patrick was looking thoughtful instead, stroking his beard idly.

“That’s right, Christmas is more something for couples than families here, isn’t it?” Once more, Patrick’s voice had dropped down into that low rumble that he’d had that one night when he and Homura had spoken about dreams and nightmares.

Homura grimaced and gulped down a mouthful of tea, trying to focus on the feeling of the liquid to push down the sudden burst of heat that threatened to break out of his body and into live flame. When he had regained some control over himself he responded. “Yes, it is. Is it not that way in America?” In reply, Patrick nodded absently, clearly still thinking about something else.

Uzume visibly pulled herself up out of her funk, putting on a beaming smile once more.

“Alright, that’s enough moping around, I’m dressed up too prettily for us all to be sitting around being all sad like this. Hey bro, I never did get an answer from you. How does this make me look?” She cupped her breasts in her hands, pushing them up and together. Combined with the plunging neckline of green trim on red velvet, it made her already impressive cleavage even more striking.

Even desensitized to the female form as he was, Homura couldn’t help but stare. If nothing else, he had to feel some level of respect for the other sekirei’s breasts. If he were a crasser individual, he might have used phrases like ‘beach balls’ or ‘globes of flesh.’ As it was, Homura would just describe Uzume as voluptuous, and leave it at that.

“Miya-dono, what are the rules regarding attempted adultery in Izumo Inn?” Medusa’s voice was light and innocent, but there was an intensity in her eyes as she stared right at Uzume that was reminiscent of a hungry python staring at a bird that was just the right size to be swallowed.

“Why, it is strictly forbidden of course. Should I explain why in further detail, Uzume-san?”

“Ah, no, you really don’t need to, really shouldn’t we eat before all this goes cold?”

Homura ignored the sounds of Uzume’s protests, Miya’s lecturing tone, and Medusa’s quiet laughter to study Patrick. The other man was also ignoring the ongoing commotion, and for the rest of the meal he continued to stare down at the table with a furrowed brow as he methodically worked his way through the contents of his plate, his other hand idly tapping out a rhythm with his fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so maybe it's a little late for a Christmas chapter... but at least an update's an update, right?


	8. Chapter 8

On one of her semi-regular nights out with Homura, Takami Sahashi had recently notified him that MBI had decided to skip over their usual schedule for releasing the sekirei during the week leading up to Christmas. Frankly, Homura was relieved, because with all the festivities being put on by the host club he worked at he wouldn’t have had the time to properly look out for any newly released sekirei during that time. As it was, he was staying out later and having to go in to work earlier to accommodate a schedule packed full of women who felt lonelier than usual because of the holiday. In addition, since he had claimed the position of the ‘number one’ host at his particular club, demands for his personal attention were at an all time high even before factoring in the holiday rush. The continuing dreams that he kept having, where again and again his own reflection would appear to torment him, were not helping him get the rest he needed.

So on Christmas morning, when he was woken up by the sound of Uzume screaming her head off, he was not in a particularly charitable mood.

He slammed his door open, storming down the hallway to the living room where he could still hear Uzume babbling and crying incoherently. Beneath his skin, he could practically feel fires blazing, just waiting for him to loose the leashes he held them on.

He turned to face the door living room, one hand on the door frame to brace himself, he took in the scene there. Miya was setting down a tea pot and cups with a soft smile, while Medusa was sitting nearby holding a box of tissues at the ready. Amusingly, she was now wearing the Santa hat that had been seemingly glued to her husband’s head for the past two weeks.

At the center of attention were Uzume and another girl that Homura didn’t recognize. Uzume had the other girl held wrapped up in her arms, and was still sobbing as she rocked back and forth, stroking the other girl’s hair. The mystery girl had light brown hair that went down to her mid back, with roughly cut bangs framing her face. She was wearing what looked like light pink pajamas, and although she was probably in her late teens there was something so delicate about her thin frame and her gentle face that she seemed several years younger.

Uzume herself was not wearing her usual casual outfit, and was instead minimally clad by a few strips of white cloth that formed a simple halter top and short skirt, paired with long white gloves and thigh-highs. There were a few long, flowing strips of silk-smooth fabric dangling from her arms and legs, many of which were visibly twisting and writhing through the air to wrap the pajama-clad girl in an even tighter hug than Uzume’s arms alone could manage.

Homura couldn’t help but frown as he took in the sight of the loops of cloth moving on their own. Recently, he’d heard a few rumors about a sekirei who concealed their identity and viciously attacked unwinged sekirei by manipulating cloth into weapons. The Veiled Sekirei, they called her, and according to the rumors she was even worse than the Lightning twins. She would appear out of nowhere in the dead of night, attack with overwhelming force and speed, and then disappear without without ever giving her name and number or safeguarding her defeated opponent until MBI could claim them, as was the custom among sekirei. A few times while on patrol, Homura had chased a figure trailing long loops and veils behind them away from a sekirei who they were stalking, but that was the closest he had come to confirming the rumors to be fact. Seeing Uzume wearing an outfit that would have matched the one he had seen those times at a distance, as well as incontrovertible proof that cloth manipulation was her power, made Homura regret discovering that there was at least some truth to those rumors.

At that moment, Miya looked up to see what had been making a racket coming down the hallway, and saw Homura. “Ah, Kagari-san, did we wake you?”

At that, Uzume looked up from where she had been pressing her face into the girl’s shoulder, giving Homura a shaky, tearful smile as she sniffed. “He- hey there, Kagari. I’m sorry about waking you up, but I’m just- just…” Shaking with emotion, she buried her face back into the girl’s shoulder and let out a choked laugh. “I’m just so happy, y’know?”

The girl in question coughed lightly, her face alight with a nearly luminescent blush as she patted Uzume’s back. “Uzume-chan, I’m happy too, but do you think you could let go a bit? You’re kinda squeezing me…”

Uzume shook her head, rocking back and forth with the girl still in her grip. “Nuh-uh, I’m not letting you go ever again, now that you’re here with me… oh god, we’re free Chiho,” the taller woman started openly sobbing now, tears running down and over her smile before flowing into the cloth of Chiho’s pajamas. “We’re free.”

Homura blinked, and looked up at Miya, who nodded solemnly, before the older woman knelt down next to the paired couple. “Uzume-san, you need to let little Chiho-chan go. The two of you are safe here in Izumo house. I promise,” the landlady declared, her voice like iron beneath a velvet coverlet.

Eventually, they managed to get Uzume to calm down, and everyone settled at the table to hear the full tale from her and Chiho.

“I met Chiho for the first time months ago,” Uzume said, her voice hoarse from emotion. She was no longer clinging to Chiho like a particularly amorous limpet, but she was still loosely holding the smaller girl on her lap. Chiho was still blushing, but she was also smiling in the way of someone who has just seen the sun for the first time after years of imprisonment. One of her arms was around Uzume’s neck, while her other hand held a tissue at the ready for the moment Uzume started to get emotional again. “She saw me jumping off a building, not knowing I was, y’know, a sekirei, and tried to save me. I ended up saving her instead, and that’s when I started reacting to her. A while later we had our first kiss, and that’s how she became my ashikabi.”

“For a while, I thought she might have been some kind of angel, what with the wings and all,” Chiho muttered, dabbing at Uzume’s still-damp eyes. The taller woman chuckled, trying to lean away playfully.

“Chiho babe, I’m all right now.”

Chiho’s blush turned several shades darker. “U-Uzume, I told you not to call me that in front of other people…”

Homura cleared his throat. “You can flirt on you own time, lovebirds. For now, Uzume, I’d really like to know what it was that made you so happy that you were loud enough to wake me up from only three hours worth of sleep.”

Chiho turned to Homura, face aghast. “Oh, I’m so sorry, miss! I tried to keep her quiet, but I’m afraid…” she trailed off as she took in the reactions to what she had said. Miya was trying to hide a smile, Medusa was shaking her head with a carefully neutral expression, Homura was twitching and grimacing as if he’d just been stabbed with an electrified knife, and Uzume was trying and failing to stifle her giggles. “Did I say something wrong?”

Homura glared at the girl for another moment, causing her to flinch away, before he heaved out a huge sigh. No matter how cranky he was feeling, he just couldn’t stay mad at the admittedly cute girl, even if she thought that he looked like a woman. He was fully aware that he tended towards the androgynous in both his appearance and his voice but it still felt uncomfortable to be labelled like that.

“I’m a man.”

Chiho blinked, looking up and down at Homura, her eyes lingering for a moment on his shirt, before blinking again as her blush intensified. “Ah, I’m so sorry, sir!”

Homura waved off her apology, trying to ignore the growing sense of disquiet within himself as he listened to her apology, forcing the mask of Kagari the playboy host to the front. “It’s alright. I’m not the sort to hold an honest mistake against a girl as pretty as you.”

Uzume practically growled as she pulled Chiho a little closer on her lap. “Watch it, pretty-boy.”

Medusa cleared her throat discreetly. “Can we return to your story? You’d just told us about how you met and recieved your wings.”

Miya smiled that seemingly innocent smile that meant she was likely a hair’s breadth away from starting to law down the law. “Yes, please do so.”

Uzume coughed. “R- right. So when I met her, Chiho was sick. Really sick. The kind of sick that doesn’t even really have a name, the doctors just call it a 'congenital anomaly' whenever they try to put a name to it.”

Chiho fidgeted a little in Uzume’s arms as she spoke up. “It started just a little while after my parents died,” she said quietly. “The most the doctors have been able to figure out is that it was a virus that caused it, but the best they could ever do was to manage some of the symptoms. I’ve spent most of the past few years in either a wheelchair or the hospital.”

Uzume picked up the story once more as she stroked Chiho’s head comfortingly. “And that hospital is where the problem came from. See, the only doctors willing or able to take her case in this city were at Hiyamaki hospital, because everyone else had…” The usually excitable and happy-go-lucky girl took in a shuddering breath, eyes welling up with tears once more.

“Just about everyone had given up on curing me. The doctors and nurses just wanted to make sure I was comfortable while they tried to figure out what was going on with my health, in case anyone else caught the same virus.” Chiho’s voice was quiet and flat as she held up a tissue to Uzume’s nose. “Blow,” the frail girl ordered, her sekirei obeying with wordlessly. Holding the now used tissue in her hand, she glanced back and forth looking for somewhere to put it before Medusa held a box of fresh tissues and a small trash can the size of a flower pot up to her. “Ah, thank you.”

Medusa nodded in acknowledgement, leaving the trash can and tissues within arms reach for Chiho so that she could hold her tea once more.

“So, yeah, that’s where Chiho’s been all this time,” Uzume continued after she had settled down once more. “Like I said, the problem started because she was at Hiyamaki, and could only go there. But that place is owned by Higa Izumi.”

Homura jerked at the name. “The Ashikabi of the East?”

Miya blinked at Homura. “Ah? Is this someone who you’ve met before, Kagari-kun?”

Homura scowled as he poured himself a cup of tea. “Not in person, but I’ve encountered his subordinates often enough. Higa has quite a few sekirei himself, and there’s a man named Kakizaki who works for him who has even more. From what Kakizaki mentioned the few times I’ve run into him, Higa has an entire network of ashikabi and sekirei who all answer to him one way or-” Homura’s eyes fell on Chiho once again, and the pieces fell into place. “Oh.”

“Higa and Kakizaki used me to get Uzume-chan to do what they wanted, yes.”

Uzume stiffened, looking at Chiho in distress. “Wha- but, I told them not to tell you about- that was one of my conditions! How...”

Chiho smiled sadly as she reached up to stroke the side of Uzume’s face. “I know you pretty well, you know. I could tell that there was something that you were trying to hide whenever you were with me; something that was making you sad, and I overheard enough of one of your conversations with Kakizaki to guess that he was making you do something you didn’t want to do. After that, it wasn’t too hard to piece together some of what was going on from what you already told me about the Sekirei Plan.”

Uzume’s face fell as she looked down in shame. “I’m… I’m sorry Chiho. But if I didn’t-”

Chiho cut her off with a quick finger pressed to her lips. “It’s okay, Uzume-chan. I couldn’t blame you for trying to keep me safe, now or ever.”

Uzume rested her forehead against Chiho’s, breathing in the scent of her ashikabi. “God. What did I ever do to deserve someone as good as you, Chiho babe?”

Homura felt a slight stab of jealousy as he watched Chiho halfheartedly try to push Uzume away out of embarrassment, but couldn’t bring himself to interfere. It hurt, watching a relationship that he could never have, but it was a good pain. Just because he was defective, didn’t mean he would begrudge Uzume for finding her fulfillment in life.

“A-anyway, Higa was blackmailing me to fight for him,” Uzume finally continued, wiping away a stray tear. “I couldn’t see any way out of it, beyond praying for some kind of miracle to happen to make Chiho well enough that we didn’t need to stay at his hospital and relying on whatever passes for mercy in that snake’s heart.” Uzume started chuckling, half out of disbelief, half out of relief. “I guess I got what I wanted for Christmas after all.”

“I was curious,” Miya said slowly, “how it was that Chiho could be here if she was as sick as you said she was, and why you were not concerned for her health.”

Uzume breathed out slowly, seeming to need yet another moment to collect and order her thoughts. “Earlier this morning, I went to the hospital. I’d wanted to show up early so that I could surprise Chiho with her Christmas present when she woke up.” She sighed regretfully. “I’m sorry you won’t get to see it, babe. I really outdid myself with it, I think.” Suddenly, she brightened up and smiled once more as she nodded towards the other sekirei in the room. “Then again, you could just ask one of the others, I’m pretty certain they all got a good eyeful of that dress when I gave it a test run!”

Medusa chuckled lowly. “If she’s talking about the dress I think she is, don’t worry about not getting to see it. If nothing else, there was little enough fabric used that it shouldn’t take too long to put back together.”

Homura nearly spat out a mouthful of tea as Chiho squealed in embarrassment. Miya seemed to be trying to decide if she should be laughing along or scolding Medusa, and Uzume was actually blushing for once.

“Are you still upset about me teasing Patrick? Come on, you know that was a joke, right?” Uzume nervously asked Medusa.

The purple-haired woman stared back blandly with a face that could have been carved out of stone. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Having recovered from almost choking on his drink, Homura prompted Uzume to continue her story once more. “You went to the hospital early today, and...”

“Oh yeah, right.” Uzume shifted nervously, pulling Chiho a little closer to herself as she frowned. “Well, I showed up fairly early. I was heading up to Chiho’s room, I’ll admit the one good thing that Higa did for the two of us was making sure that I was on the list of people allowed into her room without needing a doctor or nurse to supervise, so when I found that the door to her room was locked I was more than a bit worried. After making sure I was looking at the right door, I tried to flag down someone to unlock the door. I figured Higa was just being a controlling bastard like usual, making sure I couldn’t just grab Chiho and go whenever I’d had enough.

“So I find a doctor and tell them that Chiho’s door is locked, can they do something about that, and the doctor tries to tell me that if there’s a patient in the room, the door isn’t supposed to be locked. I got the guy to look at the door, and that’s when he figures out I’m not just wasting his time. He called up a somebody who had the key, but whoever was inside must have put a chair under the doorknob, or something.”

Miya frowned. “Someone was in there? And none of the staff knew about it?”

Chiho shook her head, face solemn. “It must have happened while I was asleep. The first thing I remember from this morning is waking up hearing, I guess it must have been Uzume, banging on the door to try to open it. I looked up, and there was… there was someone there, but I couldn’t really look at them. I mean, I could look at them, but I couldn’t see any real details, just shapes and colors.”

Homura’s blood ran cold. “Did he have a brown coat, and was there a sort of shimmering static around him?”

Uzume finally looked fully away from Chiho. “Do you know who this guy is?” She asked, her voice rigid with tension.

Homura shook his head, considering the situation. He considered continuing to conceal his dual identity as the Sekirei Guardian by claiming to have only heard rumors, but decided against it. It didn’t really matter if everyone else in the house knew, and Miya and Matsu (who was probably listening in on them like the voyeur that she was) already knew about it.

In the end, he decided to give just the basic details, and if Medusa or Uzume did some digging on their own and found that the Sekirei Guardian was one of the only people to have had a confirmed encounter with the shadow, that was on them.

“I ran into him a couple of months ago,” he began, reaching up to paw at where a pack of cigarettes would have rested in his suit jacket or overcoat pocket if he were fully dressed. “I think the forums have taken to calling him the Shadow. There have been a few people saying that they’ve seen him after that, but I doubt that there is much truth to any of them. For one thing, none of the other claims have really described that distortion that makes him so hard to look at.” Idly scratching his chest, he continued. “I spoke with Dr Sahashi at MBI a while back, and she mentioned that the official ruling is that the Shadow is a rogue sekirei with mind control abilities.”

“So do they actually not know who this guy is, or is that just what they told you?” Uzume snapped.

“This is Takami Sahashi that we are talking about?” At Homura’s nod, Miya nodded herself. “I met her on occasion, and my dear Takehito worked with her on occasion before he passed. A woman as straightforward as her would not lie to Homura’s face, I believe, not about something like this. She may work for that company, but if she did not want someone to know something, she would simply not speak about it.”

Uzume sighed. “Right. Okay. I’m sorry, I’m just kinda… on edge right now, and I don’t know if I want to find that guy so I can strangle him or stick my tongue down his throat.”

“Uzume!” Miya and Chiho’s scandalized shouts were in perfect unison, and the ponytailed-girl flinched as she absorbed the same reprimand from two different angles at point-blank range. Homura couldn’t help but notice Medusa chuckling under her breath.

In the meantime, Uzume was trying to backpedal. “I mean, I just about had a heart attack when I heard something break the window in Chiho’s room, and then another when I busted the door open just in time to see that Shadow grabbing Chiho and jumping out the window with her. But on the other hand, we’re pretty certain that he might have done something to cure Chiho!”

There was a stunned silence at the table. Finally, Homura managed to croak out a question.

“He… he did what? How?”

Chiho picked up the story. “I heard Uzume banging on the door, trying to get it open, when the Shadow broke the window. He pulled out my IVs and picked me up. I was feeling pretty out of it, so I couldn’t really do anything. It was about all I could do to turn my head enough to see Uzume breaking down the door just as the Shadow jumped out the window with me.” She shook her head, shivering. “It was kind of like the couple of times Uzume had been able to carry me around with her outside, but scarier. I think I passed out, because the next thing I knew is we were on top of a building somewhere, and the Shadow was doing… something to me.”

“Oh?” Miya’s voice was back in that familiar faux casual tone that usually preceded everyone around her spontaneously seeing hallucinations of demonic masks floating in mid air.

“It was nothing bad,” Chiho said slowly, her brow furrowed as she tried to remember. “He had one hand holding my wrist, like he was checking my pulse, and the other hand was rubbing my neck. I just remember that all of a sudden, I was wide awake and I didn’t feel dizzy or groggy anymore.”

“And that’s about when I showed up and tried to get him off of my ashikabi,” Uzume said.

“You fought him?” Homura couldn’t help but ask.

“No, well not really. I chased him out the window, then I kinda lost him for a few minutes. Whoever he is, he’s damn fast,” Uzume said, shaking her head. “I could barely keep him in sight while I was chasing him through the hospital’s garden, and then he got up onto the rooftops and for a while I was able to stay on him, but then it was like he just vanished. About a dozen blocks after that, I got this feeling, so I turned around and saw that somehow he’d doubled back and was about ten roofs back.” She took a deep breath, shaking as the act of telling the story brought her back into the mindset of a woman fearing for the life and limb of her partner. “So then I saw him crouched over Chiho like that, and I smacked him right off of her as hard as I could.” The cloth tendrils extending from Uzume’s cloths rustled at that, rearing up slightly like hounds who recognize that their master is discussing a hunt.

“I’m pretty certain I saw you draw blood,” Chiho muttered, still trying to sort through the haze over her memories.

“Like I said, I smacked him something good,” Uzume reiterated, her voice full of vengeful satisfaction. “He went tumbling right off the roof, and then… I don’t really know what happened to him,” she admitted. “I was kinda… focused on more important things. A more important person,” she breathed, nuzzling her face into Chiho’s neck.

Chiho started blushing once more as she halfheartedly tried to wiggle out of her lover’s grasp. “U-Uzume! Not in front of everyone else!”

“You said that you think he- the Shadow, cured you. Are you sure?” Medusa asked suddenly, face half hidden behind a raised teacup.

Uzume coughed as she ceased her borderline-harassment of the girl on her lap, and addressed the rest of the room once more. “Well, it’s been almost two hours since then. At first I was just making sure that she was feeling alright, when she just stood up like it was no big deal.”

Chiho giggled ruefully. “For a moment Uzume had me worried that something was wrong, she looked so shocked. That’s when I realized that I’d stood up on my own, without even a second thought.”

“That’s when I had to catch her,” Uzume noted in a tone that would have been dry if she hadn’t been smiling ruefully. “We thought maybe we’d enjoy the moment while it lasted, spend a Christmas Day together, take our time getting back to the hospital, when we noticed that she was feeling better. Way better, and she was staying better.”

“I haven’t felt as well as I am right now in almost four years,” Chiho clarified. “Even with all the best treatments, I’ve always felt tired and sore all the time. I was in a wheelchair, because moving my legs to walk hurt too much. At the worst it got, it would even hurt to breath, and I’d feel too tired to even sit up in bed.”

“When we figured out that Chiho wasn’t just feeling better but was actually better, well, we probably wouldn’t ever get a better chance to escape then that, so I ran us straight here,” Uzume finished out the story with a proud smile that was only slightly marred by the tear tracks still shining on her cheeks.

“You believe that this Shadow stole you away from your room to cure you, only to leave you alone once Uzume reappeared?” Miya sounded skeptical, and Homura couldn’t blame her.

“Uzume, do you mind letting me stand up?” Uzume hesitantly let go of the smaller girl, letting her stand up on legs that still shook a little. For all that she had to brace herself against Uzume, if you’d asked Homura and he hadn’t known the full story, he would have said that perhaps one of her legs had fallen asleep while she was sitting, but he would never have guessed that this girl had been bedridden for years. Indeed, as Chiho walked back and forth, arms outstretched for balance and Uzume hovering right behind her, she started to move more smoothly as her confidence grew and half-buried muscle memory started to take over.

“I don’t feel tired anymore, it doesn’t hurt to move any of my joints, I can actually take full breaths now,” Chiho listed before taking in an exaggerated lungful of air to demonstrate. Letting it all out in one long happy sigh, Chiho got up on her tip-toes and spun like a girl who had seen ballerinas in action, but never taken an actual ballet lesson in her life. “If there’s anything that’s making me uncomfortable right now, it’s how energetic I feel. I sort of want to try doing some cartwheels,” Chiho mused, spinning once more only for the inevitable to happen as she tripped over her own feet mid-spin. “Ack-”

Uzume was half laughing, half crying as she caught Chiho before she could get much closer than a couple feet from the ground, scooping her up into a bridal carry. “She’s been like this all day, too. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were in the middle of a sugar rush, Chiho-babe.”

Chiho smiled beatifically up at the sekirei of cloth. “I can’t help it, I’m just so happy. I never thought I’d feel better ever again, and now Uzume-chan is happy inside and out as well.”

Breathing heavily, Uzume leaned further down, her eyes lidded and lips barely parted by the whispered name of her one and only. “Chiho…”

“Oh, I see how it is.”

Everyone, Homura, Uzume, Chiho, and even Miya blinked as their attention was stolen away from the touching scene by Patrick’s accented drawl. The man himself was in the door to the hallway, leaning against the wall that the sliding door slotted into with his arms crossed and a broad grin on his face.

“When my wife and I move in, I have to fight tooth and nail to be with her in the privacy of our own room. But Uzume gets to bring her jailbait into the middle of the dining room and start reenacting the Kama Su-”

Quick as a flash, Patrick’s hand shot up to catch the teacup hurtling towards his head. Unfortunately for him, the cup had apparently been full when it was thrown, as the hot liquid within splashed out between his fingers and splattered across his face, causing the man to wince as he shut his eyes against the stinging fluid.

Homura looked back over his shoulder expecting to see Miya preparing to give one of her infamous lectures, and was startled to see that she was blinking in surprise at Medusa, who was halfway to a standing position, arm still outstretched from her overhand throw of only a moment ago, Santa hat now cocked at on odd angle from the sudden movement. She reached up to push her glasses back up, eyes still narrowed in a steely glare.

“Don’t be an ass, dear.” She commented dryly, as she slowly settled back onto her haunches.

With his free hand, Patrick reached up to wipe the bitter tea out of his eyes, slowly lowering the hand he had done the catching with as he did so. “You’ve been working on your fastball, _to mati mo _,” he observed in a tone that was significantly dryer than his face currently was.__

____

A light, girlish giggle drew the room’s attention back to the end of the table, Homura seeing Uzume’s face pale as she set Chiho back down on her feet as she realized just what it was she had been about to do in front of the tyrannical demoness of Izumo Inn.

____

At the head of the table, Miya was smiling as she idly stroked a hand along the length of her sheathed sword. Anyone seeing it for the first time might be forgiven for thinking that the sword was just an ordinary bokken, or wooden practice sword, so clean was the joining where scabbard met the hilt. Anyone who had stayed at Izumo for any length of time, on the other hand, would have had ample opportunity to observe Miya practicing with said sword, and while she always kept it sheathed while sparring with another person, she could easily have it drawn in less time than it took most people to blink. As if that wasn’t scary enough, Homura was suddenly and painfully aware that when he had first walked into the room that sword had not been on Miya’s person.

____

“If you wish to remain in residence with Uzume, Chiho-chan, I will of course be happy to let you do so. My late husband would never have turned away someone in need, and neither will I.” Miya Asama’s voice was calm and airy as she slowly stood up, and her smile remained the very image of demure and welcoming. The only indicator that she was anything less than happy and content was the way that she was still holding onto her sword, idling drumming her fingers on the grip. “We can make the formal arrangements later, but for now all that you need to know is that violence and lewd conduct are both prohibited under my roof. Kagari-san,” she chirped, making Homura nearly jump as he realized her attention was on him now. “Would you mind helping Uzume show her friend around? I’m sure Uzume-chan and Chiho-chan have a lot to catch up on while I have a chat with our other resident couple.”

____

Uzume’s eyes widened, and then she gasped. “Oh! You’re right, Miya, I really should be giving Chiho the tour, come along now…” she said quickly, almost lifting Chiho up off the floor in her haste to get to the door before the landlady changed her mind.

____

“I need something from my room anyway, I’ll come with you until then,” Homura excused himself as he stood up from the table.

____

Just before the celebrating couple reached the door Patrick shifted his position, standing up straight and resting a hand on the door jamb opposite to himself. As Uzume and Chiho came to a stop in front of the blocked door, he scratched the back of his neck sheepishly and spoke up again, more quietly this time. “I, ah..." He cleared his throat and laughed sheepishly. "I just wanted to... say sorry, about all that. What I said." Patrick’s gaze flickered from the other ashikabi up to Uzume’s uncomfortable expression and back down to Chiho, before he let go of the door and stepped to the side with a low sigh. “Rude gaijin here, formality doesn't always come easily to me.” He smiled, a soft and content smile that had little in common with his usually neutral or sardonic expression. “Merry Christmas, you two.”

____

As Uzume and Chiho passed through the door, Homura was right behind them, moving as quickly as he could without obviously seeming like he was trying to get away.

____

Patrick nodded a greeting at him as he passed. “Kagari-san.”

____

Homura paused for a moment to quietly reply. “Good luck, you’ll need it.”

____

Patrick chuckled as Homura stepped through the door, the last thing he saw of the room’s contents being the sight of Medusa looking down and away from Miya as a massive spectral mask appeared floating in the air behind the enraged landlady.

____

Homura sighed in relief, wiping some of the sweat off of his forehead with the back of his hand. Being in the same room as Miya when she was that mad was stressful enough, it was just his luck that his power would start going out of control at the same time. This time, the flames weren’t strong enough to so much as singe the edges of his clothing, but it was still enough to make his whole body suddenly feel uncomfortably warm.

____

“Right, so that was Patrick, I’ve mentioned him before, he’s usually not that obnoxious, but let’s talk about other things for now. That was the dining room - we’re just going to walk away from it for now - and the kitchen is just on the other side of that other door that was in there. There’s a bathroom on this floor too, it’s just down this hall…” As Uzume escorted Chiho down the hallway, she pointed out all the various amenities and landmarks with the hand that wasn’t clasping Chiho’s. Homura smiled faintly as he watched Uzume do her best impression of a tour guide, even as her smile got bigger and giddier by the second as she seemed to realize that she wasn’t just showing Chiho where she lived. She was showing her lover the place where they would be living together, and the thought seemed to be putting a fresh blush on both of their faces as it occurred to them.

____

Homura sighed happily as he walked after them in the direction of his room. As Kagari the host most of his time was spent conversing with bored, drunk, and lonely women all while looking out for the one who would make him react. As the Sekirei Guardian, his time was spent either patrolling the city or fighting off hostile sekirei and greedy ashikabi. Sometimes, on nights when he was left to stagger his way through the alleyways of Tokyo, trying to keep his body from burning itself up or nursing wounds from any number of bizarre and eccentric weapons, he found himself asking just why it was that he put himself through so much suffering. Then a moment like this would come, where he could see the happiness that a sekirei and their ashikabi could find in each other, and it all became worth it. Absently, Homura reached up to scratch his chest-

____

And froze.

____

Stock still in the middle of the hall, the only part of his body that moved were his eyelids as he felt his eyes widen and his face pale. Running his tongue over suddenly dry lips, he slowly, oh so slowly, jogged his fingers up and down where they touched his chest, paying attention to how the flesh underneath felt as he pushed at it.

____

With a nervous gulp, Homura started down the hallway at a pace that was just a hair too slow to be called a sprint. Ignoring where Uzume was just showing Chiho the backyard just down the hall, he yanked his door back open before closing it firmly, falling back against the door as he tried to steady his breathing. He held his hands up in front of him, watching as they shook, before looking down at his shirt.

____

“No, no, no, not again…”

____

Standing back up straight, he frantically tore at his shirt, pulling it up over his head as stumbled over to his desk. Opening up one of the small drawers on top of the desk he pulled out a hand mirror, angled it so that he could see his upper chest, and stared at his reflection. Hesitantly, he reached up once more and poked at the worryingly soft tissue there.

____

“God… damn it. How did I not notice this before now?” He hissed, prodding the fledgling breast tissue. His breasts- and there was no denying that that’s what these were- were quite small, almost unnoticeable unless you knew exactly what to look for. Not big enough to cause cleavage, not even big enough to need support, but there was no way that anyone could say that Homura was flat chested anymore.

____

“Shit.”

____

He lunged for his cell phone, still sitting on his desk where he had left it last night to recharge, and just as quickly drew his hand back from the device when he realized that flames were curling around his fingers and palm.

____

“Shit!”

____

Clenching his fist, Homura concentrated, and after a moment the curls of smoke coming from his closed hand stopped. Gingerly opening his hand once more, he studied the reddened skin, wincing slightly as he flexed the fingers experimentally. More carefully now, he reached for the drawer where he kept a ready supply of burn cream and bandages, and gingerly rubbed some of the aloe-scented gel into his hand.

____

“Guess it was too much to hope for that I was done with all this,” Homura muttered as he finally picked up his phone and flipped it open, bringing up the text message program with a few practiced flicks. Homura had always been somewhat unstable compared to all the other sekirei, physically speaking. If there were any other sekirei whose powers were actively dangerous to them, no one had told Homura, but worse than his problems with his powers was his body and the changes it periodically went through. On more occasions than he liked to think about, he had woken up in an MBI lab surrounded by scientists trying to figure out just why it was that he had suddenly gone up three cup-sizes overnight. Usually the changes only lasted a week, two weeks at most, and never went much further than making him slightly curvier above and below.

____

This time, however, it was different. Usually when these changes happened, they were more immediately noticeable as he went from flat to a B-cup over the course of only a couple days. This time, however, the change seemed to be happening more slowly. Much more slowly, Homura realized, as he thought back to how often his chest had been itching or aching over the past month. In other words, this was more like natural growth than the usual temporary bursts of femininity.

____

Thankfully, Homura had one of MBI’s top scientists and foremost experts on sekirei biology on speed dial. So he quickly texted her, enclosing a picture of his newly discovered mammary tissue so she would understand the situation.

____

There was no reply. Homura started pacing back and forth, his thoughts racing with his pulse to see which could go faster.

____

“C’mon, Takami, I know your phone is on, it always is,” he muttered after a minute of alternating pacing and glaring at his phone didn’t make an answer appear any faster. “This is a medical emergency, aren’t doctors always supposed-” His anxious murmuring was cut off by the buzz of an incoming text message on his phone, and he quickly snatched it up to see what Dr Sahashi had to say about his situation.

____

 

____

[Takami HELP]

____

[Chest.img]

____

 

____

[Homura, if you’re going to text me pictures of your naked chest at almost 10 in the morning on Christmas Day, I’m going to need more to go on than just “Help.”]

____

 

____

Homura gulped nervously, and typed out a reply.

____

 

____

[Its happening again]

____

[I’m growing breasts, I didn’t notice until today but they’re there]

____

 

____

It took another minute for Takami to reply this time.

____

 

____

[I won’t be able to see you in person for a few days, are you in physical pain or otherwise unable to make it until then?]

____

 

____

[It actually hurts less this time, I think because they’re growing more slowly]

____

[I can bind them for a few days, but not if they get as big as they used to]

____

 

____

[Keep me updated on any sudden or unexpected changes. It’s unusual for this to be happening so long after you seemed to stabilize as male, but not impossible.]

____

[I’ll make an appointment for an evening with you, and I’ll be able to do a more in-depth check then.]

____

 

____

[Alright. I just feel that there’s something different about it this time.]

____

[I’m worried]

____

[But I’ll manage.]

____

 

____

[That’s all I ask.]

____

[In case I’m not able to see you before then, you should know they’ve finalized the release dates for #70-79. They’ll be staggered out over the week leading up to New Years, I’ll get you more accurate dates when I can.]

____

 

____

[I’ll keep an eye out]

____

[Thank you.]

____

Closing his phone and setting it down, Homura sighed as he leaned heavily on his desk. Within a couple of weeks, there would be ten more sekirei who he’d have to watch over until they found their other half. He’d have to balance doing that with the extra hours he’d have to pull at work in order to keep the coveted ‘number one’ position at work for the sake of his paycheck and his pride, and now he had to make sure that he kept his new growth spurt covered up or else… well, if nothing else Matsu would never leave him alone if she found out about this. That his transformation would just be piling more stress on top of him solely by virtue of the fact that it was happening at all was just one more straw on Homura’s already straining back.

____

“Why can’t problems just come in ones or twos, rather than all at once?” Homura growled as he reached for the roll of bandages he kept in his medicine drawer.

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chiho being too good for this world is the only thing that got me through the hassle of having to reformat this chapter for this site twice.
> 
> But seriously though, you've got to admit that she's adorable.


	9. Interlude 1

There’s a paradoxical sense of life and activity that’s almost unique to large cities on a winter morning. No one really wants to be up and out of bed on days like that, yet the gears of society keep grinding on regardless of how cold and tired the cog-wheels may be. From where he stood on the roof of an office building in the Shinjuku district of Shin Tokyo, a certain Shadow had an excellent view of that lethargic drive in action as he watched hordes of office workers, secretaries, and janitors alike filing out of buses and train stations and flow into glass-and-steel buildings lined with neon signs that proudly proclaimed corporate loyalties to an uncaring morning.

He shook his head absently as he watched the spectacle, before turning his attention back to the binoculars held up in his hands, pointed at a long-distant rooftop in another district.

“I’ve seen gods and monsters, and fought things worse than both by far. Why is consumer culture the thing that gets to me?” He sighed, returning his attention to his task as his fingers flicked across the focus dials of the binoculars, the incorporated range finder flashing red as its laser projector flicked on and off like the tongue of a snake testing the air.

Lowering the device, the Shadow studied a small panel on the side where a data read-out information was located, before raising his left arm slightly. An array of panels made of golden light flickered into being around his forearm and hand, the ones along the back of his hand elongating and widening into actual screens, while the circular light-construct in the palm of his hand grew thicker and more complex, buttons and switches seeming to appear along the circumference.

A quick wiggle of the fingers caused the screen to flash as a diagram was brought up for inspection. A few more quick motions, and the screen zoomed in on one corner of the circular design on display, the line between two points on the edge of the circle showing up in a highlighted tone and changing in length slightly. Instantly, a warning chime sounded as every other straight line connected to either of those two points was forced to change angle and length to compensate for the change. With a muttered curse, the alteration was deleted, and a map of Tokyo superimposed over the intricate array of pentagons and heptagons within a larger circle.

“You won’t need those extra tablets, the array’ll work just fine with a Sigillum instead of a seal,” the Shadow muttered angrily to himself as he peered closely at where a corner in the diagram hovered over the building he had just been checking out. “The lengths I go to…” The rest of the man’s statement devolved into frustrated growling as he tucked the binoculars into his coat, poking at the haptic interface to adjust the positioning of the diagram, shifting it to the left and right. 

Finally, the man sighed. “At this point, it would almost be easier… but then-”

Abruptly, the man stopped his muttering, the panes of solid light about his hand and arm disappearing as he straightened out his hand and looked up over his shoulder towards the other residents of the rooftop.

The first of the grey-and-black clad figures smiled, her eyes almost drifting closed as she idly tapped a sheathed sword against her shoulder. “Oh, don’t mind us,” she drawled, her voice almost sounding tired from how casual she was acting. “You can keep talking to yourself. After all, anything you tell us now is one less thing we have to pull out of you later.”

Behind the speaker were two more women, one with pink hair tied up in a bun, the other with a shaggy mane of unkempt grey hair over an even paler complexion. Both wore cruel smirks, the pink one almost bouncing on the balls of her feet in anticipation, while the other swayed from side to side with an imperceptible motion.

“Or don’t. We’ll learn all about you eventually either way,” the pink one sneered, cracking her knuckles beneath the worn set of fingerless gloves she wore. “It’s just that one way is more fun for us.”

The leader held up a hand, making a faint shooing motion towards the girl. “Settle down, Benitsubasa. The Director said he wants the Shadow back in one piece, unless he makes a fuss.” Now her eyes opened visibly, an evil glint visible within them as her grin took on a wicked edge. “But don’t let that put you off the idea of trying something, of course. Please, feel free to make all the fuss you want.”

Silently, the Shadow turned to fully face the Disciplinary Squad. Through the haze of distortion that covered his form, they could still make out the blurs that were his arms rise as he slowly moved his hands to just in front of his chest, before cracking his knuckles with a sickeningly loud burst of sound.

Karasuba’s smile widened as she loosened her grip on her scabbard, letting it fall through her fingers before grasping it tightly once more just below the hilt as she held the sword down and to her side. “Well, aren’t you a charmer. I’ve gotta admit, I’ve been curious ever since I heard you were able to fight off numbers 10, 11, and 12.” The grey-haired sekirei grasped the hilt of the oversized katana, preparing to draw as she hissed out a final word. “I was so hoping you wouldn’t want to do this the boring, easy way.”

The pink haired Sekirei to her side scoffed as she planted her feet and tensed her legs. “Not that this isn’t still going to be easy!” With that she sprung forward explosively, one arm already cocked back to drive her gloved fist forward in a haymaker that could likely shatter concrete. On Karasuba’s other side, her opposite number was also charging forward, slightly more slowly, but with the near foot-long metal claws extending from the ends of her sleeves, Haihane didn’t need to move as quickly as Benitsubasa to be just as deadly.

The two moved fast enough that to most humans they would be little more than a pair of red and black blurs, but to the Shadow, it seemed as though they took entire minutes to reach him. More than enough time for him to take in his opponents and pull up his memories of them.

Benitsubasa. Member of the Disciplinary Squad. Likely combat veteran, above-average combat ability compared to other sekirei. Fist-fighter and martial artist: most dangerous assets are strength and speed. Her temper is easy to exploit, but I should still be wary of what being pissed off will do for her strength. Technique and trickery will be most effective. 

The Shadow deepened his stance, shifting his weight further onto the balls of his feet as he raised his fists up in a boxing stance.

Haihane. Most likely has similar experiences in combat as Benitsubabsa. Close-range fighter, uses clawed gauntlets. Most dangerous assets are claws and speed. If I Reinforce myself enough that she can’t cut me, I can move in to close range and demolish her there. That might just tip my hand a little too much, though. Instead... 

There was a faint jingling noise as the chain bracelets about the man’s wrists shivered and then grew, the links increasing in size from a grain of rice to just over an inch in length. The sword shaped medallions attached to each chain chimed as they remained the same size as before, even as chain links seemed to spring into existence as the wrapped chain lengthened enough that a quick shake of the man’s wrist brought several loops worth of chain up to coil around his knuckles and fingers, shielding the leather gloves beneath a layer of shining metal.

Karasuba. Priority target: tried and true killer. Swordswoman, strong enough to slice apart tanks. Too powerful to engage without showing off more abilities than I really should. 

Then there was no more time to think, only to react, as Benitsubasa’s fist came careening towards his face. 

There are a near uncountable number of ways to avoid an incoming haymaker, even for a bog-standard human, ranging from different techniques for blocking or deflecting the hit to talking down the attacker or just not being there to be hit. Someone with as many years of experience, tricks, and trinkets as the Shadow had an exponentially higher number of options. Some were easy to anticipate, such as blocking or dodging the pink-haired sekirei’s fist. Others would be a little more surprising, such as the Indiana Jones method of conflict resolution. Of course, to the perspective of the attacking Sekirei, confident as she was in her physical abilities, the only possible outcome involved her fist cracking straight into his skull.

As a result, she was unpleasantly surprised when a combination side-step and swiping block sent Benitsubasa’s fist flying off to his right side. For Karasuba and Haihane, however, the surprise and shock only came when the Shadow quickly moved in on Benitsubasa, clasped his arms around her waist, and lifted her up even as he threw himself backwards, smashing Benitsubasa’s head into the concrete roof hard enough that the entire roof seemed to shake for a moment.

Haihane blinked, surprise and amusement combining to slow down her charge just a second even as she started adjusting her course to keep on target. “Did you just… a suplex?”

The half-second that she lost to expressing her shock cost her, however, as when her claws raked down to catch the Shadow while he was still bent over backwards, the cloaked man had already rolled away, quickly settling into a crouch not unlike a sprinter’s start. Through the blur that surrounded the dark figure, Haihane was still able to easily make out the silhouette of the man’s fist coming back and up, chambering his own roundhouse punch.

Her eyes widened as she dug her claws out of the divots they had cut into the hard roof, trying to bring them up in front of her face in time to use the razor blades as a shield.

Unfortunately for her, she didn’t quite move quickly enough, as the Shadow’s fist swept up and across into her face as he exploded up from his crouch in a classic Superman pose. Haihane grunted as the impact pushed her up and back, stumbling as she tried to stop herself from falling backwards. With a growl and a sneer, she swiped one gauntlet forward blindly, smiling darkly as she felt the claws strike something solid with a screeching chime. She swept the other claw down to attack from the other side as her neck finally overcame the momentum of the previous hit, and she looked down and forward-

-just in time to see the Shadow standing right in front of her, both arms held up with the blades from both of her sets of claws resting harmlessly on the outsides of his forearms. With the faint sound of tearing beneath the screech of extraterrestrial metal blades on fantastical steel, the Shadow twisted his wrists and grabbed hold of Haihane’s forearms. Haihane sneered with a grim light in her eyes as she planted her feet steady, before drawing her head back. If this guy thought that grabbing hold of her arms would leave her helpless, he had another thing coming.

Haihane smashed her head forward in a ruthless headbutt that was intercepted by the Shadow’s own attempted headbutt. Blinking the stars out of her eyes, Haihane felt a sudden absence of pressure on one arm just in time to see a blurred fist coming straight for the side of her face. She grunted in pain as she felt a set of chain link-wrapped knuckles embed themselves into her cheek, starting to stagger back slightly as she tried to pull her free arm in, and embed the blades into the Shadow’s back. Her eyes widened slightly when she felt her other arm being released even as a hand roughly grabbed hold of her hair.

“Oh-”

**Thump. ******

****Haihane grunted as the Shadow drove his fist into her solar plexus, drawing out a metallic clinking sound as the individual chain links rattled and shook from the impact. Haihane tried to take in a breath to replace the air that she had just lost, only for another punch to come sailing straight into the same spot and reset her progress. The Shadow pulled down on her hair even as she instinctively bent over, folding her torso into an almost 90 degree angle. Haihane shook her head as best she could to focus herself, and started to reach up with a growl when she saw what was unmistakably a knee come rocketing up into her vision.** **

****“-crap.”** **

****There was a brief moment of black, and then Haihane woke up to find herself falling back onto her ass as her opponent turned to meet the charge of the recovered and pissed-off Benitsubasa. The pink-haired woman roared fit to match the bellows of the charging bull she now resembled, yet the only sound that the Shadow made as he deflected her charge to send her barreling off to his right side was a slight grunt. Benitsubasa snarled in frustration as she found herself with an armful of nothing but air, and then her eyes widened with rage and a hint of fear as she felt a pair of hands grabbing hold of the back of her neck and the back of her obi.** **

****“Ramming speed, go!”** **

****With that shouted non-sequitur, Benitsubasa found herself being lifted and spun around in a quick clockwise arc before the Shadow let go of her. Physics being what it is, however, she did not stop, much to her and Haihane’s combined dismay: no sooner had Haihane jumped back up to her feet when an airborne pink-head came flying right into her midsection, sending them both to the ground in a cursing heap of limbs and claws.** **

****The Shadow had barely any time to admire his work, however, as he suddenly rolled to his left into a low crouch even as a razor-sharp blade sailed right through the space he had occupied just half a second earlier. Backpedalling even as he stood up, the man’s hands flew through the air in a silver and brown blur as Karasuba kept up her offensive, the killer swordswoman seeming almost lazy as she swept her blade through an increasingly fast series of one-handed cuts that the Shadow kept batting away before they could get close to his body.** **

****Karasuba raised a single elegant eyebrow in interest. “Oh? You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you,” she observed as she stepped up the pace of her attacks once more, now putting visible effort into the net of steel that she was weaving around the mystery man. “Why don’t you show me some more, so we can have some real fun.”** **

****With that last word, Karasuba clipped her scabbard onto her belt, allowing her to use a two-handed grip for her next strike, aimed to cleave her target from crown to crotch. The Shadow’s hands shot up, above his head as he tried to catch the blade between his palms. Emphasis on tried, Karasuba noted with glee, since her two-handed strike was just fast enough that all he could do was slightly deflect the cut so that it landed on his shoulder rather than his hairline.** **

****A pained grunt tore itself from the man as the blade visibly sank into his left collarbone, the force of the impact creating a slight spray of crimson even as he was knocked off his feet, landing on his back with the sword still caught in his shoulder.** **

****Karasuba frowned as she pulled her sword loose with a sharp pull, holding it in one hand once more as she lightly grasped the back of the blade as she held it up to inspect the lines of crimson that flowed down the point. “Really? That’s it?” She sighed, raising her blade once more. “Well, I suppose that’s about what I expected. You power types never are all that good in a straight up fight.” Her smile returned, sharp enough to rival her sword, as she chambered another downward cut.** **

****“At least you can bleed just as well as anything else.”** **

****Rather than try to move away, or reach for a weapon, or anything that she might have expected, the Shadow calmly reached up towards its face and grabbed hold of something. With the faint sound of silk being torn, the strange haze of distortion that hung over the man disappeared, letting Karasuba finally get a good look at him.** **

****His face was still obscured by a black scarf wound around his head, although the hand tugging at one of the coils of fabric exposed a calm pair of green eyes studying his attacker. The black of the scarf was broken up by long chains of gold embroidery in the form of letters and glyphs, although they could not be read due to the strange visual distortion that flickered in and out of existence around them. The coat he wore was a weathered brown duster, the sleeves of which were torn and ragged from blocking both Karasuba’s and Haihane’s blades earlier. Beneath that, a dark button-down shirt that looked like it might have come from a military uniform was currently being stained even darker by the blood seeping out of the open wound there. Below the waist was what seemed to be some form of body armor: reinforced boots and plates of tough looking polymers layered over heavy fabrics to create a light and form fitting but still undeniably protective set of leg and footwear.** **

****Karasuba was able to briefly make out the checkered red-and-black shield shaped patch on the man’s shirt before he extended the middle finger of his free hand while he sank down into the roof, phasing through the solid surface as though it didn’t even exist. With a mocking wave, he disappeared from sight entirely.** **

****Karasuba blinked and let out a short, sharp laugh before turning towards the edge of the roof. She vaulted over the side with one hand planted firmly on the side, swinging around and down into and through a window on the floor just below the roof.** **

****Shaking a few shards of glass out of her hair, she glared at the retreating herd of panicked office workers, before turning her attention to a single desk that had been crushed from above. She stalked over to the pile of wreckage, sword held in a deceptively loose grip, cocking her head at the lack of any body. She poked at the shattered computer monitor with the point of her sword, then looked towards where the last of the office workers were piling into the elevator or the staircase, yelling about ghosts and assassins.** **

****The sound of igniting flames drew Karasuba’s attention as the crust of drying blood on her blade burst into flames that disappeared just as suddenly as they had appeared. Inspecting the blade with eyes and fingers alike, the woman quirked a curious eyebrow.** **

****“It’s just one surprise after another with you, isn’t it?” She ran a finger through the faint layer of soot that was all that remained of the Shadow’s blood, the alien-forged metal otherwise untouched by the short-lived conflagration. She smiled a butcher’s smile.** **

****“As far as holiday presents go, I suppose this will do,” she observed quietly as the sounds of doors banging open and frustrated shouts reached her ears to announce the arrival of her erstwhile teammates.** **

********* **

****Despite the multiple MBI enforcers who watched the buildings exits and discreetly combed through the interior, there was no sign of a walking mass of hazy vision or of a tall man in a brown coat. A handful of particularly tall men who came close to matching the Shadow’s build were briefly questioned, but to no avail.** **

****For all their vigilance none of the searchers, human or otherwise, took any special note of a tiny, middle-aged woman in a unremarkable skirt suit holding a clipboard against her body as she walked out through the front entrance at a brisk yet stately pace. The woman strode her way down the street, flats dully clicking against the pavement as she walked along the street, eyes flicking from side to side as she discreetly looked out for security cameras.** **

****Paranoia apparently satisfied, she stepped into the small but steady stream of people making their way into another lobby through a revolving door and a moment later Patrick Erilaz stepped back out onto the street, tugging at the tie around his neck with an expression of visible discomfort. He stumbled briefly as he strode away before correcting his course with a brief grumble of annoyance.** **

****“And to think I was looking forward to having longer legs again,” he noted as he pulled a cell phone out of the inside pocket of his jacket, calling up a calendar program with practised ease.** **

****He idly reached up to rub the phantom itch lingering in his left shoulder as he read the next entry in the program. “Well, that engine isn’t going to put itself back together, and it isn’t going to be coming to me,” he sighed before closing the phone and striding off purposefully. “Besides, clearly that particular anchor spot is a bust. Back to the drawing board.”** **

****He paused when he reached the next street corner, turning his head to one side to look up at the MBI tower where it was visible in a gap between other skyscrapers. He scoffed and shook his head as he turned towards a nearby metro entrance.** **

****“Okay, so maybe I should give you a little credit for successfully organizing something so complex,” he muttered under his breath as he reached up to adjust his tie once again, only for the restrictive garment to be nowhere in sight after he removed his hand from his collar.** **

****“Only a little, though.”** **


End file.
